4 Architectural Design

Urban Flashes Asia 4Guest-edited by Nicholas Boyarsky and Peter Lang

Wiley Academy Logo 4 8 Architectural Design ISBN 0-470848746-6 Vol 73 No 5 September/October 2003 Profile No 164 16

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Editor Helen Castle Production 28 Mariangela Palazzi-Williams Art Director 4 Editorial Helen Castle Christian Küsters ◊CHK Design 5 Introduction: Dirty Cities Nicholas Boyarsky Designer Scott Bradley ◊CHK Design 8 Chinatown is Everywhere Peter Lang Project Coordinator 16 Introduction to Micro-Urbanism Ti-Nan Chi Caroline Ellerby 38 Picture Editor 22 Way of Display: Urban Tactics in the Context of the Betel Nut Culture in Taiwan Karl-Heinz Klopf Famida Rasheed 28 Anarchy and Beyond: An Interview with Kazuo Shinohara Hirohisa Hemmi Advertisement Sales 01243 843272 38 What is Made in Tokyo? Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Editorial Board 54 48 Hyper Complex Living Nobuyaki Furuya Denise Bratton, Adriaan Beukers, André Chaszar, Peter Cook, 54 Gaikoku Mura: Japanese Foreign Country Villages Sue Barr Max Fordham, Massimiliano 58 In the Age of Indeterminacy: Towards a Non-Visual Pragmatism Gary Chang Fuksas, Edwin Heathcote, Anthony Hunt, Charles Jencks, 68 Pearl River Delta: Lean Planning, Thin Patterns Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix Jan Kaplicky, Robert Maxwell, 58 Jayne Merkel, Monica Pidgeon, 78 Bangkok: Liquid Perception Brian McGrath Antoine Predock, Leon van Schaik 86 Reconstruction Solidarity: The Thao Tribe Nicholas Boyarsky

Contributing Editors 90 Action (Verb) Taipei Sand Helsel André Chaszar Craig Kellogg 96 92 Modern Heritage: A Terrain of the Question Guyon Chung Jeremy Melvin 96 Hanoi Justine Graham Jayne Merkel 98 Contributor Biographies

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2 3 Introduction Nicholas Boyarsky

Editorial Helen Castle The greatest achievement of Nicholas Boyarsky and Peter Lang in guest-editing this title of 1 has been bringing to the fore Urban Flashes, an active informal network of practising Asian architects that was founded by Ti-Nan Chi in 1999. This issue does not pertain to be a full account of urban thinking in Asia, but rather an alternative one. As Boyarsky so clearly states in his introductory essay, the predominant modes of considering urban Asia in the West have in recent years been largely confined to corporate practice, which has regarded it as a remarkable commercial opening, and academia, which has perceived it – at arm’s length – as a depersonalised ‘phenomena’. Thus the immense need to express the almost infinite range of alternatives and diversities within Asian culture that Urban Flashes Asia so eloquently signifies but in no way attempts to circumscribe. In his own introductory essay ‘Chinatown is Everywhere’, Peter Lang further flips these notions aside by presenting urban Asia not as a geographically removed continent but as a constant presence through the Asian communities integrated within all the major towns and cities in the West. It is, however, the fascination of the Urban Flashes Group with the ephemerality of the Asian city that makes it Almost all of Tokyo’s buildings have been ‘Urban Flashes Asia’ charts a paradigm shift in Asian constructed within the last 30 or 40 years, architecture and the city. It gives voice to a unique so impressive in terms of its agility of thought. As Boyarsky using modern technology. It is this group of practitioners across a broad range of Asian points out, this is led by Ti-Nan Chi’s notion of micro- technology that has formed a background to cities who are actively redefining the Asian the appearance of shameless spatial environment in their own terms. Western architectural tactics, where small-scale interventions become the most compositions and functional combinations, perceptions of Asia have in recent years been unthinkable in the traditional European city. monopolised by two contradictory but interdependent potent, and Kazuo Shinohara’s ‘readiness to learn from So what is this city of Tokyo, which can allow factors: the rush of mainstream corporate Western such unthinkable productions? How have we architects to enter a huge emerging market and the the city’, which becomes ‘a mandate for the architect managed to arrive at such a different place rush of avant-garde Dutch architects and theorists to to act in the city as citizen rather than master planner’. from that of European modernity despite the appropriate perceived cultural and environmental availability of the same building technology? difference. These two forms of neo-imperialism, the These are all modes of practice that pose strong … Shamelessness can become useful, so let shamanism of density and the mammon of capital, us start by considering that these shameless have successfully rendered Asia both a passive paradigms for global urban planning and design, as buildings are not collapsible into the concept exemplar for innumerable student projects and a they urge us to look and listen and level ourselves, as of ‘chaos’ but are in fact an intricate willing victim to crass commercial architecture. reporting of the concrete urban situation. Rem Koolhaas’s ubiquitous and relentless city dwellers, before attempting to encroach or impose. — Yoshiharu Tsukamoto1 intellectual drive to normalise and Europeanise, or

4 5 more succinctly codify so much raw phenomena tactics – the stuff of Asian cities – become the key Urban Flashes that has linked Asian architects with from new emerging worlds, has been an other criteria in this developing consciousness. There those in the Western world, such as the Italian group opportunistic but nonetheless pioneering global are here perhaps closer connections to Western Stalker; Casagrande & Rintala in Finland; the Bergen enterprise (see, for example, The Great Leap anthropological thought, in particular to the work of School led by Svein Hatloy in Norway; our own ‘Action Forward 2 for a Koolhaasian judgement on Asian Mary Douglas on purity, pollution and taboo;4 to the Research’ work and scatter planning typologies; urbanisation, or the recent May 2003 Wired Surrealists’ interest in the primitive and to the ‘base Peter Lang’s work on Superstudio and American ‘KoolWorld’ for his more recent take on real materialism’ of Georges Bataille than to mainstream suburbia; and the work of Austrian architect, film- virtuality).3 Curiously, his coordinated efforts to architectural traditions. maker and artist Karl-Heinz Klopf, amongst others. understand the entirety of the human physical Considering much of the literature in the field, This group continues to grow and respond to Chi’s condition have by consequence succeeded in Bernard Rudofsky’s 1965 publication and exhibition concept of plasmic growth finding reinforcement excluding precisely that which he most hopes to ‘Architecture without Architects’5 was a step in the right throughout the world. Notes engage and comprehend. Asia is repeatedly cast direction, introducing an alternative world of the Urban Flashes was formed in 1999 by Taiwanese 1 See ‘What is Made in Tokyo’, p 38 of this issue. as a phenomenon, an endless source of ‘vernacular, anonymous, spontaneous, indigenous, architect Ti-Nan Chi. My first active role in the days 2 Koolhaas states in his inspiration and justification, but it is portrayed rural as the case may be’.6 Other sympathetic Western leading up to its formation began with a series of introduction: ‘A Maelstrom of modernization is destroying without characters, beliefs or cultural identities sources might be found in self-enabling publications spontaneous lectures at the invitation of Chi in Sogo everywhere the existing and traditions. from the 1960s, such as The Whole Earth Catalogue,7 department stores in Taichung, Taiwan, in June 1998. conditions in Asia and everywhere creating a However, now that the Eurocentric version of which dealt with issues of survival, the concept of tools, This lightning visit was followed by a series of trips to completely new urban Asian has been served up and consumed, there self-help and pre-World Wide Web universal Asia that defined and expanded a number of urgent substance. The absence, on the one hand, of plausible, are opportunities to explore behind the scenes accessibility to information. issues that would eventually form the core agenda for universal doctrines and the and uncover more authentic versions. The In the UK, Cedric Price’s inspiring work on time, Urban Flashes, in particular the importance of presence, on the other, of an unprecedented intensity of glorification of a Western-led globalism is to be uncertainty and beneficial change developed through developing an international network of experimental production have created a welcomed and celebrated for it marks a turning projects such as Potteries Thinkbelt, Fun Palace and and highly spontaneous nontraditional working unique, wrenching condition: 8 the urban seems to be least point. As ‘Urban Flashes Asia’ testifies, local the Generator. While within the Archigram Group, methodologies. understood at the very resistances are emerging throughout Asia that David Greene’s research into the poetic possibilities Urban Flashes took its identity through a series of moment of its apotheosis.’ CJ Chung, J Inaba, R Koolhaas, S challenge Western generalities. Sympathetic and for technology resulted in pioneering projects such as planned actions that Chi was able to orchestrate at T Leong (eds) The Great Leap flexible networks are identifying and linking the Botteries.9 These alternatives, all curiously anarchic the abandoned Hwa-Shan site in central Taipei. In his Forward, Taschen (Cologne), 2001, pp 27. activities of architects, artists and theorists or apolitical, form receptive ground for the current 1997 exhibition ‘Cities on the Move’, the Swiss 3 Rem Koolhaas, guest-editor across the world. Asian condition. curator Hans Ulrich Obrist had assembled a touring of Wired magazine, ‘Koolworld’ (on the cover credited as an The work shown in ‘Urban Flashes Asia’ is When in this issue Kazuo Shinohara talks of ‘a show that combined the work of architects and ‘iconoclast’), June 2003. produced without dogma or reference to definite division between architecture and the city’, he artists, including Chi himself, from many Asian cities, 4 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Western paradigms. It is pragmatic and establishes the limits of architecture and at the same in response to rapid change and growth. This Concepts of Pollution and concerned with close readings of existing fabric time opens architectural discourse to a plethora of provided an inspiration for Urban Flashes – the idea Taboo, Routledge (London), 2001. and behavioural patterns; it is informal and new and constantly changing forces that make the that the new Asian city could provide a common 5 Bernard Rudofsky, preoccupied with self-organising principles. It is Asian city. What may appear at first as a renunciation ground for discussion across continents. Architecture Without Architects: A Short individualistic work and, above all, it is highly of control in fact signals a readiness to learn from the The first ‘Flash’ was held in Taipei at the Hwa-Shan Introduction to Non-Pedigreed optimistic. The inevitability of this reaction has city and a mandate for the architect to act in the city site. Participants (‘Flashers’) from Korea, China, Architecture, MoMA (New York), 1965. been increasingly apparent in recent years and as citizen rather than master planner. When Mary Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Europe led 6 Ibid (there are no page Urban Flashes has become a catalyst that has Douglas defined dirt as ‘matter out of place’, she workshops of students, engaged the media, lectured numbers in catalogue). 7 For example in Portola sparked this chain of self-expression and desire recognised the vital role of disorder in any system: about their own work and brainstormed. Situationist Institute, The Whole Earth for global connection. ‘Order implies restriction; from all possible materials, tactics were hotly debated alongside the role of Catalogue: Access to Tools, Menlo, California, 1970. From the Asian side we can see a long- a limited selection has been made and from all technology and environmental concerns. The resulting 8 Cedric Price, Works 2, awaited liberation from adherence to the star possible relations a set has been used. So disorder by body of work was influential in the development of the Architectural Association (London), 1984. system of European architectural history implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realised site as a flexible events-led urban park. Last year saw 9 See for example Peter Cook, whereby lip service must be paid from afar to in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite. This conferences and workshops in Taipei, Linz and Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron canons of humanist Modernism. In this issue of is why, though we seek to create order, we do not London on issues of technology, urbanism and Herron and Mike Webb (eds) Architectural Design, when Yoshiharu simply condemn disorder. We recognise that it is change. Future events are planned for Istanbul and Archigram, Studio Vista Mexico City. (London), 1972. Tsukamoto speaks of ‘shamelessness’; when destructive to existing patterns; also that it has 10 Mary Douglas, op cit. Kazuo Shinohara speaks of ‘the beauty of chaos’ potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.’10 The future of Urban Flashes will be determined by and ‘progressive anarchy’; when Ti-Nan Chi The notion of ‘dirty cities’ follows from these. The city the sometimes programmed, sometimes haphazard Opposite introduces notions of ‘plasm’, ‘micro-urbanism’ as a system of disorder is not a city of chaos but one of regrouping and expansion of the initial premise, that Laurent Gutierrez + Valérie is, to identify and document, develop and architect a Portefaix, Pearl River Delta, and ‘tactics’; or when Gary Chang articulates constantly changing value systems. It is inclusive, fluid billiards. Now that the the concept of of ‘non-visual pragmatism’, we and responsive to small actions. Above all, as Peter new global platform for encounters within an Eurocentric version of Asian expanding international community. This non- has been served up and are witnessing the emergence of a new Lang highlights in ‘Chinatown is Everywhere’, the dirty consumed, there are vocabulary and new ordering systems to make city is everywhere. institutionalised forum will in the future offer many opportunities to explore behind opportunities to share and network information, and the scenes and uncover more sense of the Asian material world. Matter, the It is the fascination for the ephemeral, for dirt and authentic versions. ad hoc, appropriation, rapid change and survival for self-organising principles shared by members of process design. 4

6 7 8 9 It is a strange city where an apparent disorder being that is inextricably linked to an overdramatised global network. Urban populations have become cresting urban phenomenon, it will be just as and invisible order exist side by side. notion of the sentimentalised decline of civilisations, an so squeezed and stretched that the thick social unimaginable to expect earnest contributions in the I concluded that the gap between the absurd all too pervasive vision that is similarly evident in and topographic agglomerations of these cities reconfiguration of a new visionary architecture. The mixture of different spaces was what fuelled today’s architectural culture as well.3 are virtually unmappable except from satellites current architectural debate has lost its polemical bite; the vitality of anarchy.1 The sense of Luddite resistance seems to run deep surveying from outer space. The unpredictable no architectural thought today speaks passionately for through continental North American, and large parts of fluctuations in migrant populations, the ever or against another; architecture now is merely a The undisciplined zones of the metropolis European, society, where speculative home-builders compressed and frequent cycles of poverty, and pastiche of trends, rhetorics, technologies, traditions. are those in which one can still recognise have embraced an agoraphobic simulacra of a 19th- the grinding effects of unregulated speculation None of the usual paradigms: the client – corporate or the possibility of living authentically, building century New England village (Tudor village? have for ever altered the established rules of this state; the programme – functional or redundant; the spaces based on a ‘local’ consciousness that Schwarzwald village? Mediterranean village? Take your once aristocratic gentleman’s profession. What style – purist or eclectic, assert any measurable ethic or is inseparable either from the experience of pick) to satisfy their mass-consumer markets. The purpose does an education in architecture have if aesthetic influence on the future course of architecture. it refuses to adapt to the revolutionary nature of One could even argue that there is, in many places, a participating in daily life (an ongoing dialogue), visionary prescriptions of today’s mainly bicoastal or from the continuously renewed articulation Atlantic architectural avant-garde have become this generation of emergent urban cultures discernible withdrawal from the debate on the future of of the relationship between centres and increasingly isolated from global trends by simply influencing the way cities behave today? In other architecture altogether, making whatever eclectic peripheries, between internal and failing to deal with these global-scale transformations words, what is to be done with the lessons learnt association of single disciplines and specialities the external, between the known and the or to develop appropriately broader critical strategies. among these nondominant cultures that are ipso default definition for contemporary practice. 2 (relatively) unknown. Moreover, the major academic institutions and facto building the future? There are, of course, many new and pressing issues international magazines continue to construct Shanghai, Mumbai, Istanbul and Mexico City being brought to the design table, concerning The Wachowski brothers’ film The Matrix, with intellectual barriers around themselves, precisely are the rough-and-tumble urban urchins stealing environmentalism, globalism, postcolonialism and the two new sequels just this last year, has proven because they continue to defend canonical positions the limelight on the world stage. The most spreading digital information age. However, these risk

itself to be a worldwide phenomenon with an that either discount fundamental transformations in the startling discoveries, important innovations and remaining niche topics within an otherwise incredibly broad mass appeal. This apocalyptic general architectural culture or proselytise without hotly contested debates are focused here in these overwhelmingly inflexible discourse on architecture.5 digital fantasia, despite its leaden serious dialectical engagement. Yet judging from the great jumbo cities that are energetically renewing Architecture’s long-revered master narrative pretentiousness and overcaricatured human way popular entertainment has taken a leading role in their cultural repositories and inventing entirely increasingly finds itself confronting the inadequacy of society, attempts nonetheless to propel Zen and the global spectacle, it is fair to say that audiences are new urban practices. No academic models today an academic vision that privileges the neatly structured London French philosophies into a swirling mix of heated more than willing to contemplate a hybridised can properly predict the eruptive potential of the and closed world-view over the messy assortment of Previous spread Interior display at Victoria Hong Kong combat scenes set in stylishly black heterotopic vision of a future world. And as should be 21st-century frontierless city. The legacies of instant ideas and rapid actions coming from so many Star, Newport Place, cowboy Western long-coats. In contrast, it would apparent in this issue of Architectural Design, there are industrial and late-industrial cities throughout proximate and distant sources. But the bottom line is Chinatown, London, 2003. seem that today’s international gurus of many voices of diverse provenance that are becoming Europe and North America are hardly relevant to that maintaining an elite posture no longer contributes New York architecture barely aspire to erecting a similarly increasingly engaged in leaping around the boundaries understanding the sheer complexity of these to making desirable commodities for modern survival, Above left Kenmare Street, Chinatown, inspired hybridised world of architecture; much of the architectural canon. expanding conurbations spreading across the nor a truly universal language with which to New York City, 2003. less have they considered nurturing the kind of The need to deal with architecture and cities from globe.4 No comprehensive master-planning can communicate ideas across ideological divides. Above right global design philosophy that could successfully many different perspectives on a world dimension has restrain, let alone keep pace with, this late-era To critically understand the nonfamiliar, one needs to Elizabeth Street, Chinatown, pull together East and West into a more kinetic never appeared so critically urgent, precisely because phenomenon. begin by recognising the unpronounceable nature of the New York City, 2003. and protean approach to form-making. without the usual Cold War ideological crutches to If the obvious circle of Western academics, subject itself. What then constitutes this other vision, Opposite Curiously, the great weakness of The Matrix is sustain the existing system it has only become more upholding the dominant canon, is hard pressed this non-canonic, non-elite, non-Western subject? What Mott Street, Chinatown, New York City, 2003. its messianic message of loss, a condition of difficult to recognise and substitute different links in the to rationalise, and thereby internalise, this term best describes the kind of phenomena we 10 11 recognise developing throughout so many investigation are leading to the documentation of very subtle ways the representation of expression of the modern logic of domination – one regions of the globe but, perhaps particularly in processes, exposing plenty of ready-made localised architecture is changing together with its should, instead, ‘let oneself go’, drift along, while recent times, with so much dynamic force in evidence for entirely new and radical productions in definitions. The sensually textured photographs retaining an inner distance and indifference towards nations located around the Asian Pacific rim, the architecture and urban forms. Notes of buildings, abstracted to their limpid surfaces the mad dance of this accelerated process, a so-called ‘Asian miracle’ cities? Here the Franco La Cecla wrote in Losing Oneself: Man 1 See Hiro Hemmi, 'Anarchy and momentarily uninhabited – once popular distance based on the insight that all this social and and Beyond: An Interview with greatest perplexity is the result of a confusing Without Environment: Kazuo Shinohara', in this magazine covers used to seduce a professional technological upheaval is ultimately just a non- mix and mismatch of geographies, cultures, issue. public – are increasingly giving way to complex substantial proliferation of semblances which do not 2 Gianni Vattimo, ‘Preface', in 10 local and global trends. The problem is further I prefer to speak of ‘the local mind’ that should be La Cecla, L'uomo senza mosaics of images that through their multiplicity really concern the innermost kernel of our being. compounded by the fact that from the start we understood as the culture of living, of constructing- ambiente, Bari, Laterza link the built world to its living context.9 The (Rome), 1988, p xi. have not even a barely adequate way of referring living, and not of ‘vernacular architecture’, 3 Clearly this experience of transformation is indeed a function of the Zizek considers these oriental-inspired antidotes to to the Asian phenomenon without borrowing ‘architecture without architects’, ‘spontaneous loss behind the West’s changing architectural subject that no longer can Modernism as symptomatic of today’s peculiar cultural perceived decline requires 6 terms from the dominant canon to begin with. architecture’, ‘primitive architecture’, ‘traditional more discussion than space be contemplated as an isolated and static burden. But his statement also recognises that the In truth, architects working along the architecture’, because every one of these definitions permits here, especially as moment, but instead requires a dynamic and specific condition has forced the marooning of society digital technology seems only geographical edges of mainstream culture were is, not only a humiliation for the immense fresco that to have accelerated the shifting vision to envelop and wrap the object in from its spiritual centres, revealing the symbolic already for some time aware that the rationalist is the human faculty for living, but also a definition general sense of alienation. its space. These bundled visions of the built depressions pocketing today’s contemporary For a start, see Joseph legacy of the international movement was ill- without hope. It is not the visible remains that give Rykwert’s investigation into environment are not simply part of a temporary technologically driven global culture. Entire populations suited to interpret the spontaneous growth of justice to the culture of living. This consists in ‘Adam's House’, where he trend but represent long-term redefinitions in the float within these drifts, leaving ample evidence that the conjectures that much cities and their corresponding architectural addition to and moreover of all the visible processes architectural theory is based engagement and production of space. According artefacts of daily life have been undergoing serious digressions. Architects like Kazuo Shinohara that can be conducted into an edifice.’8 on this primal concern. He to Slavoj Zizek: transformations as well. But one of the more curious states: ‘The return to origins is learnt to circumnavigate inflexible dogmas, and a constant of human long-term effects is the increasing mixing of instead Shinohara began to build his own It is therefore possible to recognise that the mind’s development and in this The recourse to Taoism or Buddhism offers a traditionally distinct cultural worlds, the blending of matter architecture conforms perceptive methodology, returning again and facility to probe and interpret the world is a critical to all other human activities. way out of this predicament which definitely East and West, the commingling of identities even when again to the chaotic Shibuya district in Tokyo to aspect of the act of creation, conditioned on emergent The primitive hut – the home works better than the desperate escape into deliberately and xenophobically resisted. London of the first man – is therefore Above test the strength of his convictions. Shinohara manifestations of local culture in real space and time. no incidental concern of old traditions: instead of trying to cope with A vast spectrum of universal daily-life activities and Gerrard Street, Chinatown, engages in a critical interplay between canonic If recognising the changing nature of the subject is theorists, no casual ingredient the accelerating rhythm of technological by-products are now interchangeably transferred from London, 2003. of myth or ritual. Much of and non-canonic models of architecture and city the first step in the process of an evolving understanding today’s contemporary popular progress and social changes, one should one end of the globe to the other. ‘Gameboys’, animated Opposite forms to create alternative architecture working of architecture, then improvising ways to read these cinema remains fixated with rather renounce the very endeavor to retain cartoons, nanotechnologies and pet robots are but Newport Place, Chinatown, apocalyptic futures that tend to 7 London, 2003. methodologies. This and similar kinds of changes becomes essential to the experience itself. In degenerative myths; popular control over what goes on, rejecting it as the some of the ubiquitous signs of commonplace cultural 12 13 architecture is following in a similar path.’ J Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise: the Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architecture History, MoMA (New York), 1972, p 192. 4 Contemporary North American and European cities have been quietly expanding into their suburbs and peripheries, but these really locally indigenous patterns are only gradually receiving sufficient attention among the elite institutions still largely fixated with centre city issues. 5 Green architecture, for example, does make a lot of sense already and will surely succeed in addressing concerns for the world’s shrinking resources, but architects, planners and landscape architects are not about to effect major changes until a significant shift takes place within the population at large – not that impossible to imagine if one thinks about the advances achieved in other similarly contested areas of the body politic. But as long as the most pollutant nations on the planet shirk environmental responsibilities, green architecture will remain experimentally challenging but only minimally relevant: hopefully the 'green' movement will not become a mere sidebar to Western academic politics as usual. 6 The descriptive minefield that we face when attempting to define 'Western' and 'non- penetrations that call into question Western weaving back and forth across continents that makes the Western' or when identifying precisely Asian from Central cultural hegemony in the first place. In other task of building a non-canonic architecture all the more Asian, Near Asian or words, there really are no barriers, frontiers or obvious: Chinatown is not really an ethnic demarcation; it Southeast Asian, is another issue altogether. I would like to limits separating Western and non-Western is really a designation for a means to a different end, as acknowledge a series of cultures but merely degrees of interpenetration. can be observed in the way Chinatowns have adapted, conversations on this subject with Esra Akcan for her help in Take, for example, the extraordinary number of mutated and influenced the myriad cities on every setting out this condition. communities rising distant from native sources, continent where they have been taking root. Akcan teaches critical theories on world architecture at such as the ‘Chinatowns’ in New York, London, The promise offered in the collection of articles in Columbia University. She is Berlin and Paris. The frequency of exchanges, this issue of Architectural Design is one of currently working on her PhD thesis provisionally titled the multitude of interrelations, all conspire to reconciliation and dialogue between East and West 'Modernity in Translation: erode the principal notion of exclusivity, racial precisely because there are plenty of indications that German-Turkish Exchanges in Land Settlement and identity, cultural uniqueness and legacy. many observers from both have already opened Residential Culture’. We should still heed the warnings, however, themselves to the kind of cross-fertilisation that makes 7 See Hiro Hemmi, 'Anarchy and Beyond: An Interview with that recognise the shortcomings of an over- this type of exchange uniquely creative and rich in Kazuo Shinohara', in this romanticised, clearly nonhistorical vision of the potential. Stepping outside the dominant canon is issue. 8 La Cecla, op cit, p 5. Orient conveniently serving as a depository for a necessary because the hegemonic narrative acts to 9 Architectural publications large part of the world’s uncategorised exotica.11 A suffocate emergent tendencies whether from distant have been changing Paris dramatically since Rem stagnant view of the East effectively eliminates lands or from nearby landfills. Two-way dialogue has Above Koolhaas's and Bruce Mau's Terrace, Les Olimpiades, contemporary working strategies that could the potential to expose and spread new cultural SMXL appeared some ten years Paris, 2003. ago. possibly question or even subvert existing Western experiments, crossing and crisscrossing increasingly 10 Slavoj Zizek, On Belief, hegemonic tendencies. In any case, the networks obsolete ideological barriers. The goal is to work with a Right Routledge (London), 2001, Entrance to shopping mall, pp 12–13. of communications, transportation and economic multiplicity of master narratives: to understand the way Les Olimpiades, Paris, 2003. 11 See Edward Said's investments already tie vast swaths of the East to architecture fits together with the world, not how the Orientalism, Vintage Books Berlin (New York), 1979, for deeper the West, reinforcing the observation that world can be forced to fit to architecture. ‘Urban Opposite insight into this contested Vietnamese Market, Meeraner Chinatown is indeed everywhere. Yet it is precisely Flashes’ offers several such snapshots, prescriptions world of representations and Strasse, Berlin, 2003. misrepresentations. this progressive entanglement of living cultures for an already existing future world. 4 14 15

War is the father of all things and the king However, they were inspired by the ‘Flashers’ occur, the plasmodium changes from an animal-like over all. (participating architects and artists of Urban Flashes) multinucleate protoplasm to the appearance of a — Heraclitus, 500 BC and our transient meetings. Nonetheless, though they fungus, thus well adapted to its surroundings via share the same mindset, all of the Flashers have their migration or a renewing life cycle. In my speech, ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’, for the own unique approach. Since the formation of the group, The plasmodium reflects the content of our clammy opening of ‘Cities on the Move’ at Secession in we have become more and more aware of our role in urban living. People survive by utilising technology and Vienna, 1997, I treated the expanding high-density the formation of the future city, which is neither a limited resources, and by maintaining an interdependent development fuelled by advanced technology in a heroic demonstration nor grass-roots resistance as we and intramural proto-organic relationship. new generation of booming mega-cities as the know it today. Rather, we are forging in-between Architecture and city planning were once surgical signal for a historically unprecedented urban actions with micro-scale tactics to generate a better exercises that were little suited to diagnosing urban condition capable of drawing the attention of the living environment. internal micro-scale problems, while building activities are art and architecture vanguard. I suggested a way of Today the city contains patchworks of different assumed to be regulated and controlled by pragmatic thinking that went beyond the existing planning physical characteristics and social-cultural situations. operations. The formalistic urban structure of a sanitary methods today. Karl-Heinz Klopf, an artist based in The presupposed congeniality has already been lost, building project excludes the latent tumorigenic factor Vienna whom I met in 1995, was especially even in old-core urban areas. The public can find much Our instant encounters now have even more from its formula. Meanwhile, the neoplasm-like illegal impressed by the dazzling effect of lights and at fault with years of careless planning, yet at the same fluctuations with the universal use of mobile constructions and settlements are vital and spread quickly projection of spaces in Tokyo. We have been time no one is quite sure how to check this vicious circle telecommunications. Following rapid market across cities, evidence of how the residue is transformed working together under the banner of Urban that promotes the hasty agglomeration of masses and demands and immediate-response capital into inseparable and indispensable parts of the larger city. Flashes ever since. volumes that continues the blind pursuit of prosperity. investments, cable lines, antennae and halfway In many ways similar to plasmodia, people tend to The first ‘Urban Flashes’ workshop was To examine the city from a macro-scale level is no stations, often without integrated planning or migrate into new territories to begin a new life. When the realised in 1999 in Taipei, when15 architects and longer effective when current chaotic phenomena are without permit, are installed above or below the given living condition is bad, or when the condition gets artists from Europe and Asia were invited to often illegible, and even more misleading under more city’s existing buildings. These attached worse, people manage to recycle their limited work on strategies to revitalise the use of the formal analysis. We have seen efforts to invent or transmitting accessories do not usually follow possessions and reinvent their cocoons. The convertibility abandoned sites in the Hwa-Shan area for art resurrect dominant structures, to demonstrate heroic the conventional infrastructure but spread in the and self-help nature of the local community has become and cultural purposes, via proposals for rectifications, to reinforce the regulations and so on, in direction of the transmitter’s broadcast patterns. a forgotten factor inside the preconceived ready-made encouraging public awareness and the process order to battle with the so-called urban ‘disease’. As nodal links to individuals and other coexisting society; worse, it has been gradually discarded as the of negotiation with the city’s formal institutional Micro-urbanism suggests there are internal worlds, they change the cityscape and divert remnants of anarchic criminality. sectors. The results of the workshop were widely realities to be investigated in order to describe how activities in the city from within and afar. The notorious nomads of the city, the homeless, publicised and later triggered the development things interact and coordinate in the micro-scale The fear of increasing density is contingent on might not be without homes. Rather they are taking a of the Hwa-Shan area into a visionary urban park realm that manifests the true spirit of a city and its the mounting pressures over scarcer resources pathway leading to the reconstitution of their lives. in conjunction with information technology, a people. The inner reality comprises not only and insecurity regarding the exploitative nature Wandering peddlers move around the streets with project that is now being officially implemented. repetitive, robotic activities but also a plasma of of society. Density as a quantitative problem may simple personal effects committed to their carts and The events of 11 September 2001 only conflicts and actions. People survive not within a be resolved by distribution and disposition. But the routes. In reality, this can be read as a form of eco- reinforced our motivation and deepened our rational state but in this more plasmodial mode of there are unavoidable congestions that arouse a wise behaviour humans conduct in order to survive in conviction that a new global condition was upon living, as our observations generally have revealed. sense of uncertainty. Congestion is more critical the harsh urban environment. us, clearly underlying the urgency to locate new and often more a psychic issue than a pragmatic Abandoned industrial sites, private and public vacant forms of architecture and city planning. In 2002, Plasm problem. To accommodate vast numbers of buildings, and city peripheries are the empty areas of a three consecutive Urban Flashes events were Inside cities, where countless ongoing exchanges and residents we need to agglomerate masses and city, places that provide refuges and alternatives for held in the form of symposiums in Taipei, Linz clashes take place, we experience daily incidents volumes to produce another landscape that people who need rooms within which to breathe and and London, and the Urban Flashes network of together with our own private struggles – some that can offers new combinations of wonder and roam. The areas of urban emptiness signify the darker architects and artists gradually evolved into a be identified as forms of war, and others that are forms excitement. Technological progress, however, side of master-planning and grand-scale development collective force similar to an alternative NGO. of interaction and negotiation. Such phenomena can be does not necessarily facilitate life’s many but somehow, even within these environments, there is The ideas being stated in this text do not described as plasm, to indicate the primal state of living bewilderments. Neither do growing levels of room for beginning anew. Worse yet would be to fill necessarily represent Urban Flashes as a group. that has long been ignored and misinterpreted in transit mobility and speed capacity provide any these voids using singular-minded planning methods architecture and city planning. more freedom and safety. An individual is easily that merely cage the potential urban vitality. The multinucleate cities in Asia manifest this overwhelmed by consumeristic techno-fever. dispersed situation of mutations and complexities. The Floating signs and information billboards have Tactics hidden side beneath the visible forms in fact occupies built a new dimension that tumefies our Thus the highest realization of warfare is to the bulk of the public realm, which is bewildered by conscious and forms of dominance. For those forge strategies; next is to deal with alliances; Right the irrational fluctuation of emotions and actions. In living in the cities, the need to be mobile simply next to charge the armed forces; and the Transformation of the entering the public domain, in-situ interactions means the possibility of improving circulation, an lowest is to attack their fortified cities European city. A residential block in Barcelona is function as art that goes beyond set rules and modes Above ability to adapt to countless restrictions, and the when unavoidable. demolished revealing of negotiation. The unstable and chaotic flows of Aerial view of Taipei revealing chance to escape surveillance. — Sun Tze, Art of War, 500 BC temporary traces of its the city’s bursting energies construction. The development encounters and engagements exemplify the bursting that are generated by the The plasmodium, or slime mould, is a was a politicised act that energy in the city that excites human behaviour and unstable and chaotic flows primitive life-form commonly found in forest War awakens the need to understand confrontations. provoked neighbourhood of encounters and protests and police response. building activity. engagements. ecosystems. When unfavourable conditions Today we observe hectic conflicts and fighting on the

18 19 Topos when chewed. In Taipei, the young girls who sell food market. When trains come, the vendors remove their Configuration of terrain is the prerequisite to such nuts are referred to as ‘Betel Nut Beauties’. goods and sheds behind the track. When trains go, the warfare. Judging the given conditions, Dressed in sexy costumes, they stand inside or marketplace is reassembled. In Taipei, taxi drivers cut into taking control of victory, estimating ravines outside a flashy glass booth to entice those a line of moving vehicles to get out of a jam or to speed up. and defiles, the distant and near, is the Tao of driving by to stop and buy betel nuts. The lavish Using radio phones, those who share the same interest streets as well as through the media. People are the commanding. bodies and settings are designed for interaction, may gather on certain sections of the road to protest or to constantly seen making strategic moves to gain — Sun Tze, Art of War, 500 BC therefore to be constructive parts of the city. unite in pressure on the police or an opposing group of taxi advantage or to escape from danger. Modern At the same time, illegal vendors need to be drivers. They are turning the road into an action arena planning, however, does not take account of daily The ground we are attached to raises the innate able to disappear when chased by the police. coexisting with the civilian use for transportation. activities that are often marked by the degree of awareness of our existence, which is invisible but Their carts, containers and sheets are therefore uncontrollable human will. Instead, planners use nonetheless incomprehensible. Alteration of the designed to be movable, dispersible and Bunker grandiose hypotheses to sanction these grounding plane results in the mobilisation of senses restorable. The retreat is planned in advance. And a correspondence dawned on me as between inevitable ongoing actions. and perceptions. The topos constructs our horizons, and These time-conscious apparatuses are these places of shelter from danger, and places of These in-situ moves, which support conditions our biological mechanisms and physical effectively inserting into intervals of dullness worship, which are also places of salvation. fundamental survival tactics in everyday life, activities on earth. and commandment. — Paul Virilio, From Modernism to Hypermodernism need to be recognised and examined. They are Paul Virilio’s suggestion of the oblique circulation was and Beyond, 19971 themselves the core of social-political dynamics an attempt to gear towards this fundamental revolt. The Detour that induce change within cities. The following installation of Tangibleintangible was a case, on a very If they are substantial, prepare for them; The third stage of speed revolution, as Paul Virilio are major tactics derived from observations on manageable scale of operation, of how people and goats if they are strong, avoid them. If they are pointed out, suggests that we are now more than ever the more obscure aspects of daily life as the walk on slightly slanted or sloped ground to further angry, perturb them; be deferential to foster living in a reduced, bunkerised space. With the aid of point of departure for micro-design and planning. unveil the insignificant determinant in the space. their arrogance. If they are rested, force them digital technology, cyber travel provides an autistic The techniques of bridging and dis-bridging are both to exert themselves. If they are united, cause virtual womb from which dwellers can be reborn. On Vacuity crucial in building up the strategies for access to such them to be separated. the other hand, people see the city as a battlefield and Subtle! Subtle! It approaches the formless. significant manoeuvres. The efficiency of these — Sun Tze, Art of War, 500 BC are always seeking their bunkers. A bunker is not — Sun Tze, Art of War, 500 BC strategies includes the speed of construction or necessarily a monolithic fortification. The bunker can be destruction and the understanding of the sloping river To survive in a highly dense and competitive found spaces and temporary structures when its Taoist metaphysics attends to the world’s needs banks to be connected or disconnected. environment, one has to take the risk of being location is strategically near points of observation and of the weak and other intangible behaviours. To occupy a strategic location in a city devoted to on the fringes of norm and danger. In order to access to the supply – like true stories of warriors Note Less is not only considered to be more, but more seeing and being seen should become a priority for 1 John Armitage (ed), ‘From play safe, sometimes one needs to subvert the spread over the vicinity. Though the facade of an idyllic Modernism to critical, no matter how vulnerable it appears to working in the field. Selection of location can be Hypermodernism and beyond: dangerous zone. This detour could be seen on house may remain, underground cellars and tunnels An interview with Paul Virilio’, be. In line with Tao–Zen thinking, minimalists based on the knowledge of the topography, scenery Paul Virilio: From Modernism the collective level practised long before the become the living room for retreating troops. have worked on the purification of the and psychogeography of the area, which offers to Hypermodernism and emergence of Situationist ideas regarding Beyond (London, Thousand preconceived form to obtain a spiritually insight to choose the relationship to the surroundings Oaks, CA, and New Delhi: détournement. Architectonic traces of the above-mentioned tactics have abundant state. However, this concern with in order to ignite positive engagements and prevent Sage), 2000, p 32. In Bangkok, street vendors gather along the in fact existed since the beginning of time, and can be aestheticisation has never reached the heart of fatal entrapments. sides of the railway tracks, forming the city’s daily found in any city on the globe. When strolling in Brussels the transient and formless side of being. we see gradually evolving colonnades and steps Non-Euclidean geometry and digital fluid Deception connecting walkways to different levels of routes and systems are now being employed to accommodate Thus although capable, display incapability to open spaces, which is in itself a micro-urban device. entire facets of the ever-changing context in the them. When committed to employing your Using the background of this city as a conceptual hope of introducing the vitality of the free spirit. In forces, feign inactivity. When it is nearby, make demonstration, I propose using a 4-metre 3-D grid as a fact, forms and shapes themselves do not it appear as if distant; when far away, create general reference to allocate small elements that necessarily bear transitory meaning. It is the the illusion of being nearby. Attack where they accommodate activities and structures. The small

Above overall setting that allows for the interplay with are unexpected. Go forth where they will not elements will be given qualities similar to nanomaterials Ti-Nan Chi, Tangibleintangible the formal and the formless which influences be expected. to enable the instigation and reorganisation of the urban installation, IT Park, Taipei, 1998. The installation asks people’s deep comprehension and judgement. — Sun Tze, Art of War, 500 BC fabric via a smart disposition of these micro-urban people to consider the sort of The Tao Art of War emphasises the subtle elements. The mechanism is expected to contain free impact of a slight shift in terrain on both our senses and play of intangible substance to formulate Appearance is understood as the direct contact with connections, multiple interactions, autonomous divisions, physical movements. Goats strategic deployments. The formless or transient perceivers. Instantly, this produces the impression of individualistic bunkers and propagandable masses. and people are forced to walk on slanted ground in a limited substance can be utilised in either a visible or the substance behind the surface. To shape a preferred In deploying these tactical elements inside the existing area. invisible manner. And the ultimate strength look, it is almost unavoidable to apply camouflage or urban landscape, the city is stripped naked and reveals

Opposite, bottom depends on the total effect of the arrangement mount illusion. The deceptive approach is not just a exigent political actions and exchanges in the public Santa Marta, Colombia. The in time and space. Except for the placement of psychological wrestling but also aims for an sphere. This is also about how we like to treat the history plasm and plasmodium of urban living conditions. masses and volumes, architects have to magnify understanding of the existing reality, aiming to find a of a city that has never been merely one-faceted. The Dwellings and landscape the limited resources at hand, usually with small channel for formal engagement. folded corners and liminal areas need to be uncovered merge into a primal stage, which evokes the true process or insignificant elements, to create preferred Betel nut is the seed of a tropical palm-tree flower and penetrated in order to expose the process through of urban development. conditions that help things to flow. common in Southeast Asia, and has a stimulant effect which the city constantly updates its equilibrium. 4

20 21 22 23 The Informal Sector makeshift constructions emerged for the selling Betel nuts are consumed predominantly by from colourful fluorescent tubes, and by their often Booming economic growth-spurts as well as of everything possible. long-distance truck drivers and males in the large number of flashing lights. The signs overpower recessions develop new urban spaces and new Probably the most culturally interesting and lower economic classes, who each consume as the confusing density of billboards and forms of life and survival in accordance with particular sector is that which has developed many as dozens a day. The effect of chewing is a advertisements concealing the building facades, and their respective cultural contexts.In Taiwan, a out of the new marketing strategies for betel nuts – a feeling of warmth in the body caused by the this illumination of the street spaces increases as society which lives predominantly in cities, a new, independent culture, created by various stimulation of the central nervous system, acting one gets closer and closer to the betel nut booths. new space- and work-provision branch, often regional and global influences. as an aphrodisiac and also mildly intoxicating. Floor-to-ceiling shop windows, rollable glass boxes subsumed in the informal sector, has emerged However, it is also claimed that regular or containers on stilts, all painted in happy colours, as a result of the extremely fast economic Planting–Selling–Chewing consumption can lead to oral cancer. are supplied with cut-out glass surfaces and mirrors development of the second half of the last According to the most recent studies, the chewing of The cultivation of betel nut palms and the offering a spatial structure for young girls wearing century and the necessity to manage this state betel nuts can be traced back thousands of years to marketing and consumption of the nuts have now tightly fitted ‘uniforms’ – the so-called ‘Betel Nut of affairs. mountain tribes in the southwestern part of the island. found their way on to the streets of Taiwan. Beauties’ (Chinese binlang hsishi). During this period, existing buildings were In the 17th century the first wave of the Han came from Throughout the country there are roughly If one pulls up in front of one of the booths, a Betel Top Previous spread illegally expanded in all directions, a situation southern China, and it was they who adopted and Pull-out betel nut booth. 100,000 ‘booths’ selling betel nuts, and these are Nut Beauty swiftly steps out to your vehicle to take your Betel Nut Beauties dressed in that was tolerated due to the need for increased continued this tradition. Today the cultivation of betel most commonly found along highly frequented order. Betel nuts, cigarettes, energy drinks, information ‘uniforms’ to attract customers. Bottom production and storage space. Living rooms palms, which often takes place illegally, especially Betel nut booth under roads, crossings and highway turn-offs. about the area and, if it is not too busy, a brief chat are The informal sector suddenly became factories, and the ‘family in the mountains, and the subsequent marketing of construction. The box can From a distance, truck drivers can identify all on offer. It is this service, the conspicuous Above be moved, on bars, back Containers and betel nut booth. as a factory’ became a promotion slogan. Mobile betel nuts, is a national economic factor. to the arcade. these booths by their peacock signs made appearance of the girls combined with the possibility of

24 25 having a short interaction of closeness during temporary stores, simple mobile units, and the early The potential of the street as a space for which can be pushed from the pavement into an existing the otherwise dreary workaday world, which is betel nut stands were no different. performing is here explored in a highly delicate building within a minute. And other booths can easily be the most essential aspect of success in the However, the great pressure of competition around way. Sometimes the girls will stray out into the loaded on to a truck and set up for business elsewhere. bitterly contested betel nut market. the middle of the 1990s forced many betel nut vendors traffic, waving and using dance-like movements to However, apart from the other negative effects of to develop new marketing strategies, and tactics for make their presence known, giving them a sense the betel nut business, for example land erosion Performing the Streets attracting clients became increasingly sophisticated. that they are the stars of the streets. This self- through illegal cultivation, mainly in mountain regions, With the swift expansion of the highways, With the use of colourful, flashing lights and scantily impression of out-of-the-ordinary is supported and or the possible damage to health, this phenomenon is brought about by the construction work in the clad girls a lively display was designed to seduce the displayed in these colourful productions by an example of dynamic and creative spatial cities and the resulting massive increase of senses on otherwise rather unattractive streets. Betel nut shops at night incorporating ingredients of the pop culture: intervention, which has, without planning, quasi- commercial traffic in the booming 1970s and The girls change their ‘costumes’ every day – nurse, Above, main image flashing lights, loud pop or techno music and spicy anonymously arisen in an in-between area of official Last-generation transparent Everyday life of the 1980s, the habit of chewing betel nuts quickly military, school uniform or characters taken from betel nut shops designed with costumes. Though such offensive strategies structures. Here we are dealing with a cultural form betel nut business spread throughout all regions of the country and Japanese Manga stories are just some of the themes Western names. generate higher profits, they also very often result that develops out of its own traditions, current Top Betel nut booths designed as also within the cities. At the same time came the that are alternately presented to the motorised clients. Above, inset in hefty fines and sometimes traffic accidents. conditions and foreign influences, where thousands of glass boxes on wheels. growth of the informal sector, in the form of Taipei-based architect and Urban Flashes initiator Betel nut shop ‘Tiffany’. The It is hardly surprising, then, that the owners of stands along the busy streets have created an young owners carefully design Bottom illegal expansions and extensions to existing Ti-nan Chi sees this as deceptive appearances, as a their new stores giving their these betel nut businesses have developed authentic service network over the entire island, the Orange betel nut shop buildings, in order to cover the rapidly increasing kind of tactic on a micro-urban level that urban products a better image to win increasingly ingenious systems of disappearing. potential of which can provide other possibilities for and ‘beauties’ in matching new customers from the ‘uniforms’. need for space. The streets were marked by planners and designers can learn from. middle classes. One example of this is the vending box on bars, communal and cultural development. 4

26 27 An Interview with Kazuo Shinohara Kazuo Shinohara has been one of the most influential architects in Japan. The ‘Shinohara School’, a label dubbed by architectural magazines for architects who have either studied with Shinohara or have been influenced by him, now encompasses an impressive array of leading Japanese architects. The minimal yet provocative houses for which he is widely known are an obvious source of this influence. Equally influential but not as widely available outside Japan, are his manifestos on architecture and cities. Here, Hirohisa Hemmi interviews Shinohara on the development of his urban thinking and ideas.

‘In the mid 1960s, I introduced the concept From the bipolarity of the two disciplines, I attained the “beauty of chaos” to explain the situation in true antithetical, ambivalent way of thinking. I felt Tokyo. I used this concept of chaos in a intuitively that if I were to immerse myself in the strong positive context, not only in architecture but attachment towards traditional architecture, nothing as a logic for understanding the world.’ new would emerge. So I consciously tried to confront tradition through logic. Although my affection towards Shinohara may have been the first architect to tradition has not changed, I have used negation as a recognise chaos as a positive and an essential method to take the process of creation to the next stage. element in a contemporary city. Although the ‘In the 1950s, when my strong affection for traditional terminology echoes the ‘chaos logic’ in architecture led me to pursue a career in architecture, mathematics, a field which he abandoned in the the pioneers of modern Japanese architecture were early 1950s, his concept was in no way a reference absorbing Modernism via the US, using the Katsura Villa to the ‘chaos theory’ in mathematics which was as a point of reference. A mere coincidence that Katsura established in the mid-1970s. Although his idea of Villa and compositions of Mies van der Rohe looked chaos resonated with the cutting edge of scientific similar proved pivotal in the acceptance and spreading research, it was ‘intuitive’ and highly personal, of Modernism in the 1950s. I, on the contrary, felt that ‘coming from a very strong self-confirmation the Japanese tradition was fundamentally different on why the visual disorder of Shibuya area where from the tradition of Mies or from the column and beam I passed every day was not unpleasant’. structures of Le Corbusier, and focused on this point, Inherent in these words is his basic stance, elaborating and clarifying the differences in my PhD to gain understanding through reasoning within thesis “Research in the Spatial Composition of Japanese the parameters of architecture and not through Anarchy and Beyond Anarchy Architecture”. What seems similar in appearance is reference or analogies. It is a method similar in actuality the opposite, was one of the conclusions. to a mathematical process of demonstrating ‘The architectural movement that began from an a theorem and it can be traced to his unique interest in a particular aspect of Japan and Europe, beginning as an architect. ‘As a researcher in which was similar by coincidence, was successful mathematics, I went to Kyoto around 1950 for for a while but never acquired the energy to endure. a conference. There I was overcome by a strong The pioneers connected traditions of Europe and feeling towards traditional Japanese architecture Japan without much reason. They couldn’t see beyond Opposite House in White, Tokyo, 1964. and decided to pursue a career in architecture. the similarities to notice the differences.’

28 29 The Logic of Ambivalence for the theme in the Second Style. Here, I pursued the ‘Logic of ambivalence refers to my method of possibility of contemporary Japanese expression allowing contrasting meanings to define my distinct from a literal expression or familiarity with existence simultaneously,’ says Shinohara. This Japanese tradition. From the Uncompleted House idea is central to his approach to architecture I would consciously generate counterpoints and and becomes apparent when one traces the contrasts to embark on my exploration of what I called transitions in his architectural works, which are the “cube”. I realised in my pursuits that although grouped into what he calls ‘styles’, according it was possible to share affinities with the geometric to shared themes. cubes of European Modernism, expression of richer ‘In the First Style where Japanese tradition qualities inherent in the cubes of the Middle East or was the central theme, I was in search of North Africa could not be achieved. This realisation objective approaches to confront Japanese led me to the Third Style, which explored compositions tradition while being conscious of my strong liberated from both Japanese tradition and the cube affinity towards its expression. After the of European Modernism. completion of my first work, House in ‘In the design of Tanikawa Residence, located in the Kugayama,1 this approach became a conscious mountain resort of Kita-Karuizawa, which is known method of composition. I then focused on a for its lush greenery and abundant rain, wooden small contrast within Japanese tradition, structure and sloped roofs were logical points of

Opposite, top left that of the residences for the noble class, as departure. I used these elements as a prerequisite Kugayama House, Tokyo, 1954. exemplified by Katsura Villa, and that of the and attempted to differentiate this house from the

Opposite top right common people, namely the farmers, and houses of the First Style. From around this period Uncompleted House, Tokyo, designed House with Earthen Floor and I began dialogues and confrontations with the 1970. Umbrella House, which shared qualities with previous two styles already completed. It is a very Opposite, middle rural dwellings. In the designs to follow, I placed complex process of negation, in no way related to Umbrella House, Tokyo, 1961. another filter and arrived at House in White, the straightforward negation of Modernism by those Opposite, bottom which cannot be categorised into either of the who embraced Postmodernism. Being fully aware Tanikawa Residence, Kita- karuizawa, 1974. two strains of residential architecture. of the attachment to the things I had designed and ‘If my First Style can be summarised in these positioning a new composition in contrast, they were Above House in Higashi-Tamagawa, words, the Japanese, abstract, cubic space attempts to see where this process would take me. Tokyo, 1973. realised in House in White became the genesis In the Second Style, for instance, it was an attempt to

30 31 A brief overview of Shinohara’s first three styles address city design issues were defective. This introduced the concept ‘progressive anarchy’ to explain reveals the complex play of opposites at many different view, shared by the majority of architects at the this new condition in the city. In a manifesto entitled levels of his house designs, which he considered as time, was based on the assumption that cities ‘Toward Architecture’, he identifies ‘beauty of chaos’ as a concentrated expression of architecture. At a much could be planned. Shinohara, on the other hand, vitality or energy one feels when walking in areas such broader scale of opposites, he addressed the issue of claimed that ‘if each architect spoke on cities as Shibuya, and continues on his exploration to uncover the city and houses or architecture in general. Here, freely, there would be as many ideal cities as its essence. it is important to emphasise that the city and houses there were architects, and as long as this ‘I recognised that the vitality of the city was borne out were considered opposites and not seen as elements situation was not resolved, city design was not of the conviction that each and every building was the in a continuum. At the foundation of his ideas on cities logically possible nor worth trusting’. most sleek and beautiful. I observed that while the most is his notion of the city ‘as an entity completely ‘To dismiss city design only by this up-to-date electronics technology filled the streets there independent of houses’. reasoning is correct and I think it is still valid were also rows of small wooden houses just behind, the Citing that Modernists in Japan often made reference today. That is precisely why we have cities like strictly ordered interiors of which suggest the to Le Corbusier’s Voison Plan to claim house and city Tokyo, which for me is not misguided but persistence of such formalised aesthetics, with roots in as synonymous, and that the concept for houses could rather is the only possible outcome. Nothing the Middle Ages, as that of flower arrangement and the be applied directly to cities, he declared this idea else can logically exist. The social condition, tea ceremony, though in fragments. It is a strange city invalid and that ‘houses could represent only as far as personal possessions, the configuration of the where an apparent disorder and invisible order exist side architecture in general but not the city’. He considered land survived through generations – these by side. I concluded that the gaps among the absurd architecture as a result of a creative will but saw the factors alone can make Modernist coherence mixture of different spaces were what fuelled the vitality city as an ever-changing mathematical system in cities unachievable.’ of anarchy.’ comprised of an innumerable number of determinants. Apparent chaotic state in cities was inevitable From around this time, the area around Shibuya see what can be designed to counter the By placing a definite division between architecture as well as charming for Shinohara. So, in the station began to gain the attention of many architects flowing, gentle slopes and the eaves of and the city, he diminished the role of the architect as climate of optimistic megastructure being from abroad. Shinohara says: ‘What attracted these traditional structures. In the Third Style it was the creator of cities, thus allowing for a more objective proposed to replace the ‘ugly’ existing structures jet-setting architects could not have been exoticism. a dialogue with the First Style in one instance and critical observation of cities. of Tokyo, he stated emphatically that this I think it was the beauty or the vitality, appealing to and with the Second Style in another. A typical ‘charming’ chaos ‘should not be seen as the the emotions which celebrate life that is quite different example of this process is the House in Beauty of Chaos object of criticism nor demolition’. from the aesthetics of Europe.’ Top Shibuya at night, 1979. Uehara. It began as a complete cube into which Shinohara’s concept of ‘beauty of chaos’ came about as This phenomenon, along with Tokyo becoming a structural system of column and braces, a a response to the emergence of a new genre called ‘city Progressive Anarchy recognised as one of the most exciting cities in the world Bottom Exterior view. House in highly personalised system with connections design’ in Japan in the 1960s. Some architects of his As the visual chaos of the area around him in the 1980s, was welcomed by Shinohara as a Uehara, Tokyo, 1976. with the Japanese tradition, is juxtaposed.’ generation claimed that house designs that did not proliferated throughout the 1970s, Shinohara demonstration of his idea of ‘beauty of chaos’ in actuality.

32 33 Super-Big Numbers Set City Japan using his theories and concepts3 to test their In 1999, Shinohara introduced the concept validity. He has made some preliminary observations ‘Super-Big Numbers Set City’, which was and is now in the process of searching for a concept derived from yet further changes occurring in model for further exploration.’ the area around Shibuya. Shinohara sees future cities all over the world ‘At around the time the concept “Progressive coming to resemble Tokyo. He cautions, however, that Anarchy” was introduced, the area around Shibuya eradication of the existing buildings to replace them station became the centre of youth fashion. with the ‘Tokyo’ model would be disastrous. Towards the end of the 1990s, many venture ‘Take Shibuya, for example, they could have made businesses of information technology were drawn the condition in 1979 a preservation zone. That corner to the area and the name “Bitter Valley”,2 dubbed pharmacy was quite something. I think the vital issue after “Silicone Valley”, became popular. The is how the world deals with this dynamic from now on, area is synonymous with cutting edge and people because if the whole world became a homogeneous gather intuitively with the expectation of finding “big number”, it would be unbearably boring. So something interesting. This connection with the when I talk of the next issue, it refers to how we can younger generation created new energy which was formulate a new mechanism which can effectively transformed into innovative developments in the confront the “big numbers” at a global scale. IT sector. Chaos is often associated with poverty ‘I have maintained that “chaos” as seen in Tokyo is or with an approaching catastrophe, but the visual a positive quality, from the concept of “beauty of chaos” chaos seen around Shibuya is of a totally different to “super-big numbers set city”. However, this does kind with no association to such negative factors. not preclude my stating that the quiet scenery I It has vitality all its own. encountered in cities in such areas as Peru or Morocco,

Shinohara’s unique approach involved a continuous observation of a particular phenomenon in Tokyo over time to derive a series of concepts. He would then test their validity against the phenomenon of Tokyo as a whole. It has so far proved effective in uncovering an essential quality of Tokyo.

‘As in the recent situation in Tokyo, if the where time seems to be absorbed into space, is also hardware and software which make up this worthy of note. Appreciation of “chaos” must not mean phenomenon become very large in number, the repudiation of Peru or any other situation. Without the character of the “big number” itself begins to other, the world cannot exist.’ determine the outcome. This is what I call From this stance, Shinohara arrives at the idea of “Super-Big Numbers Set City”. Here, the power ‘world cities’. It is not yet fully defined but is of an individual becomes negligible. Whatever comprised of two opposing images at the foundation is done architecturally will not bring about any of his notion of cities, namely quarters where silence change to the city itself. It’s not accurate to say is predominant and streets full of hustle and bustle. that architecture will be engulfed in such a city He sees the ‘world city’ as a city in which the two but that it becomes elements to enhance the images ‘function side by side, without losing their vitality of the whole. Even if one were to make respective definitions’. It is a city that reflects his a large building, the city will not be transformed basic stance of ambivalence, relative certainty of the Top Hachiko Plaza, Shibuya, 1979. by its emergence.’ existing set off against the new to allow for constant rejuvenation. Middle top Shinohara's evaluation of chaos Anarchy and Beyond Shinohara’s current project is to formulate ways in cities as a positive quallity Shinohara’s unique approach involved a to make this concept valid while designing a house does not repudiate the silent quarters of a city where time continuous observation of a particular to correspond to it. It is a creation of a minimal space seems to stand still; they phenomenon in Tokyo over time to derive a to correspond to the vast world – back to the process are equally important qualities in his concept of cities. (Left to series of concepts. He would then test their likened by Jean Nouvel to a scientific experiment of right): Ouagadougou, Burkina validity against the phenomenon of Tokyo ‘introducing small amounts of foreign organism to see Faso; Bisac, outside Cuzco, 4 Peru; Cuzco, Peru; Fez, Morocco. as a whole. It has so far proved effective in its effect on the larger whole’. Shinohara goes back uncovering an essential quality of Tokyo. to the design of houses because he believes that ‘just Middle bottom (detail) Order and disorder in Tokyo. Although his manifestations are limited to as neutrino is involved in the birth of the universe, Tokyo, he has recently undertaken a project with the smallest of spaces can logically go face to face Right Order and disorder in Sa˜o Paulo. his former students to observe cities outside with the vast world’.

34 35 One of the most notable contributions by Shinohara is the separation of architecture and the city. By defining them as separate entities he frees the cities from being a mere extension of architecture while at the same time allowing houses, the smallest of building units, to confront logically with the city.

Postscript: Opposites as the Essence explores it further by expanding the boundaries of its During the interview, Shinohara makes reference logic to transcend its much criticised exclusivity. The to Le Corbusier’s Voison Plan as epitomising the interview reveals the ‘logic of ambivalence’ as central limitations of Modernist logic. However, it should to his thought process throughout his career. Not only be pointed out that his evaluation of Le Corbusier his houses but also his theories on cities, which have is not at all negative. In an informal conversation not been as widely publicised outside Japan, share following the interview, Shinohara identifies the same structure. He recognises the gap between Le Corbusier's ambivalence as a key quality. opposites as a source of vitality in cities and introduces

Notes He credits this quality as vital in making Ville the concept of ‘world cities’ as a means of resisting 1 This house was seen to Radieuse valid; and says that without Ronchamp, the trend to be uniformly chaotic. At first glance it may evoke the feeling of Katsura Villa as pointed out by a which emerged as an expression of his seem conflicting for an architect to proclaim chaos reviewer for Architectural nonrational side, his rational side would not have as a positive quality and then to also warn against its Review magazine. (3 April, 1958). endured. But he goes on to add that Le Corbusier uniform dissemination, but it is entirely consistent 2 Shibuya is written as a was not able to include these aspects into his in the logic of ambivalence since reconciliation of combination of Chinese characters which mean ‘bitter’ logic. Shinohara’s attitude is that of ambivalence, opposites lies at its very essence. In this way, Shinohara and ‘valley’. and Le Corbusier’s theories are incorporated carefully defies the inclination to converge, to keep 3 The observations were compiled in a book entitled into his creative process of negation. his logic open and inclusive. Discourse on Tokyo from This attitude towards Le Corbusier is One of the most notable contributions by Shinohara Tokyo via Kazuo Shinohara, Kajima Publishing (Tokyo), demonstrated in his 1979 paper entitled is the separation of architecture and the city. By 2001. ‘Towards Architecture’. The title is no defining them as separate entities, that is to say, 4 Dialogue between Shinohara and J Nouvel, ‘“Ultimate coincidence and he draws on the Tomcat fighter architecture as a result of a process of creation, and Modernism” to change plane and the lunar module to explain his ideas, the city as a result of their agglomeration, he frees architecture?’, Kenchikugijutu, January 1988. just as ocean liners and biplanes were used as the cities from being a mere extension of architecture analogies in Le Corbusier’s version. He is quick while at the same time allowing houses, the smallest to add, however, that his is not so much a visual of building units, to confront logically with the city.

Opposite (main) analogy as a demonstration that the Tomcat’s Countless examples of planned cities gone astray House under High-Voltage true capabilities and functions are not directly seem to support this distinction. Yet the strongest Lines, Tokyo, 1981. reflected in its outward appearance. support seems to come from the body of work he Opposite (inset) Shinohara’s architectural exploration is has produced based on this premise. Although ironic, House in Ashitaka, Ashitaka, 1977. devoted to formulating a logic to reconcile sets the works he created through a complex system of of opposites such as logic/emotion and negation, self-reference and differentiation begin to Above Tokyo Institute of Technology, rational/nonrational. In other words, he takes on resemble a real city with a sense of vitality surpassing Centennial Hall, Tokyo, 1987 the project the Modernists had embarked on and that of any planned city. 4

36 37

expressway

tennis courts night game flood lights

Japanese magazines and textbooks formulate an idealised and tasteful view of Tokyology, and the spatial expression of architectural works displayed confusing urban landscape as a architecture that is ultimately unobtainable in such a densely populated city as metaphor; our goal was to get away from the attitude that Tokyo. The actual reality of the urban situation is that it is occupied by ‘disgusting’ warehouse the city can be summarised by metaphorical expression. new buildings of shameless spatial compositions and functional combinations. railway tracks From the start we avoided considering examples that elevator shaft for the tennis courts could be read as stereotypical images, for example stylistic Transport links, housing and leisure facilities often overlap in a single building or eclecticism and contrast between pre- and super- in uncomfortably close proximity. Here, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (with co-authors modern. We decided to try to avoid working with nostalgia. Momoyo Kaijima and Junzo Kuroda) suggests that rather than turning their The examples we stuck with were based more on particularity in the way they related directly to use. By heads away from the ‘shamelessness’ of this architecture, architects should be treating the relations between elements as the major learning to look to it as a ‘reporting of the intricate urban condition’. issue, we tried to see the object without preconditioned meanings and categories. We tried to look at everything flatly, by eliminating the divisions between high and low The Appearance and Disappearance such work appears depressing. However, the reality cultures, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, a way of of Shamelessness of Tokyo is that it is already fully occupied by such seeing we believed was called for by the urban space of When returning to Tokyo, especially from ‘disgusting’ buildings. If we cannot attempt to turn Tokyo – a gigantic agglomeration of an endless variety Europe, I’m often surprised. Roads and train these into resources, then there is no particular reason of physical structures. lines run over buildings, expressways wind to stay in this city. Surely we can begin to think about There are too many exceptions to be able to themselves over rivers, cars can drive up ramps how to take advantage of them, rather than running convincingly deduce each building’s composition from to the roof top of a six-storey building, the huge away. Shamelessness can become useful, so let us start the urban structure. So if we try to collapse da-me volume of a golf practice-net billows over a tiny by considering that these shameless buildings are not architecture into a typology, we will lose the interesting residential district. Major European cities are collapsible into the concept of ‘chaos’ but are in fact mongrel nature of the differing elements. Our flatness still using the buildings of previous centuries, an intricate reporting of the concrete urban situation. means something more specific. and have not been modernised in terms of building stock renewal. By comparison, almost Survey Beginnings architecture should not become. However, if you Guidebook all of Tokyo’s buildings have been constructed In 1991 we discovered a narrow spaghetti shop look closely there is just one strong point to them. The result of the observation also depends on the within the last 30 or 40 years, using modern wrenched into the space under a baseball batting- In terms of observing the reality of Tokyo through method of representation. If the method doesn’t suit the technology. It is this technology that has formed centre hanging from a steep incline. While neither building form, they seem to us to be better than observation, the result often cannot be grasped. It is a background to the appearance of shameless a spaghetti shop nor a batting centre are unusual in anything designed by architects. therefore important to develop a method of spatial compositions and functional Tokyo, the packaging of the two together cannot be These buildings are not explained by the city representation that does not lose observational quality. combinations, unthinkable in the traditional explained rationally. Despite an apparent convenience in of Tokyo, but they do explain what Tokyo is. So, The format we chose here was that of a guidebook. European city. their unity, it is not necessary to hit baseballs towards by collecting and aligning them we believed that Tokyo is a giant maze-like city without physical So what is this city of Tokyo, which can allow the opposite hotel, sweat, and then eat at a spaghetti the nature of Tokyo’s urban space could become navigational aids such as axes or urban boundaries, and such unthinkable productions? How have we shop. In addition, it is difficult to judge whether this is apparent. Although at the time a best-selling it is perhaps for this reason that there are innumerable managed to arrive at such a different place from an amusement machine or a strange architecture. The guidebook to Tokyo was full of architect- guidebooks on every facet of life in this city. Tokyo has that of European modernity despite the building simultaneously invited a feeling of suspicion designed works, it did not show the bare Tokyo already been edited to suit every possible objective. Even availability of the same building technology? that it was pure nonsense, and expectation in its joyful we had experienced. It could not answer the if they form a kind of software after the fact, in terms of Previous spread and wilful energy. But we also felt how ‘very Tokyo’ were Above question of what kind of potentials lay in the organising the way the city is used, guidebooks can Made in Tokyo Map – Da-me Warehouse court Architecture Changing Our Surroundings into Resources the buildings that accompanied this ambiguous feeling. Function: Warehouse place in which we were standing. What can it become a tool for urban planning. However, a guidebook ‘The buildings we were Today, architectural magazines and university Having been struck by how interesting they are, we set and tennis court mean to think about and design architecture does not require a conclusion, clear beginning or order. attracted to were those giving Site: Iidabashi, Chiyoda-ku priority to stubborn honesty textbooks are filled with famous works, East and out to photograph them, just as though we were visiting On the second floor of the beside da-me architecture? This seems suitable for Tokyo, where the scene is of in response to their West, old and new. Specialists such as a foreign city for the first time. This was the beginning Iidamachi goods-train station never-ending construction and destruction. surroundings and and paper-dispatch centre programmatic requirements practitioners and critics find their criteria by of ‘Made in Tokyo’, a survey of the city’s strange and is a platform for the delivery Flatness without insisting on looking at overseas examples and Japanese nameless buildings. of paper around the country; The starting hypothesis for the survey is that the From Architecture towards Building architectural aesthetic and the third to fifth floors are form. We decided to call these classics, but though this is correct and necessary dedicated to the store of paper situation and value system of any city should The buildings of Made in Tokyo are not beautiful. They “da-me architecture” (no-good the values woven by this situation reveal Tokyo as Da-me Architecture and the first floor is the truck be directly reflected through unique buildings. are not perfect examples of architectural planning. architecture), with all our love yard for dispatching. Almost and disdain. Most of them are a city covered by disgusting buildings. If our The buildings we were attracted to were those giving the entire floor area of the In the case of Tokyo we suspected that in da-me They are not A-grade cultural building-types such as anonymous buildings, not footsteps are actually embedded in a pitiful urban priority to stubborn honesty in response to their train station and dispatch architecture could be found the key to libraries and museums. They are B-grade building- beautiful, and not accepted in yard’s roof space, 160 metres architectural culture to date.’ landscape, the idea of using famous architecture surroundings and programmatic requirements without by 50 metres, is used as tennis understanding the city and its architecture. types such as car parks, batting centres or hybrid But if you look closely ‘in as a criteria base seems just an attempt to insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. We decided courts. The courts can be However, the definition of da-me architecture containers including architectural and civil engineering terms of observing the reality accessed directly by an of Tokyo through building express good taste. Photographic books amplify to call these ‘da-me architecture’ (no-good architecture), elevator shaft which stands was not necessarily clear from the beginning. works. They are not ‘pieces’ designed by famous form, they seem to us to be a desire for an architecture that simply cannot with all our love and disdain. Most of them are independently We debated at length over each example as we architects. However, what is nonetheless respectable better than anything designed of the main volume of the by architects. These buildings be found in our surroundings. anonymous buildings, not beautiful, and not accepted in building. Lighting facilities for collected them, taking care not to think about about these buildings is that they do not have a speck are not explained by the city of If it comes to this, then suddenly architectural architectural culture to date. In fact, they represent the night games also light up an the city as a conceptual model. In the 1980s a of fat. What is important right now is constructed in Tokyo, but they do explain what advertisement – the tennis Tokyo is.’ design no longer holds any interest; the future of form of building that has been regarded as exactly what school looking for students. background of chaos affirmed theory and a practical manner by the possible elements of that

40 41 metropolitan expressway expressway toll gate

place; the buildings do not respond to cultural This includes the unexpected adjacency of function context and history. Their highly economically created by cross-categorical hybrids, the coexistence car efficient answers are guided by minimum effort; of unrelated functions in a single structure, the joint department store ramp in Tokyo such direct answers are expected. utilisation of several differing and adjacent buildings They are not imbued with the scent of culture; and structures, or the packaging of an unusual urban they are simply physical ‘building’. ecology in a single building. Moreover, Tokyo is a contradictory place, Within Tokyo’s urban density are examples of a because it is these ‘buildings’ that in fact most coherency that crosses over categorical or physical clearly reflect the quality of urban space. The building boundaries. This is something that differs from translation of issues of place through history the architecture of self-standing completeness. Rather, and design seems like fabrication – this is Tokyo. any particular building of this kind can perform several Where cultural interest is low, interest in roles within multiple urban sets. These buildings cannot practical issues is high. Whether civil be specifically classified as architecture, or as civil engineering structures, roof tops, walls or engineering, city or landscape, thus we decided to call gaps between buildings, whatever is at hand such coherent environments of adjacency is utilised. What is important is the discovery of ‘environmental units’. Cross-categorical hybrids such as expressways and department stores can arise. Here, the department store depends on the expressway for its structure, and on the other hand the expressway depends on the department store for its validity in such a busy commercial area. Neither can exist on its own – they are interdependent.

how to establish a second role for each In Tokyo, the external envelope does not act to divide public and private, as in the traditionally understood company housing environmental element, a doubling up that allows the reuse of spatial by-products. The idea of a facade. We are in a fluid situation, where rigid concrete mixer material is not given, but is discovered through distinctions such as between shallowness and depth or company office our own proposition of how to use it, something front and back are easily overturned by a shift in the Above plant Highway department store which might be termed ‘affordance’ of the setting of the ecological unit. Function: Expressway and urban environment. In addition, cross- The magnificent architecture of architects retains department store Site: Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku categorical hybrids such as expressways and distinctions between categories, rationalises physical and Ginza, Chuo-ku department stores can arise. Here, the structure, pushes preconceived use on to that structure

The department store extends mixer truck parking along a curving expressway, department store depends on the expressway and tries to be self-contained, even though there are so mixer trucks filling the site of what was for its structure, and on the other hand the many diverse ways in which to define environmental previously the Shiodome river. Extending 500 metres, the expressway depends on the department store unities. It is a method that Modernism has passed down store spreads over two floors. for its validity in such a busy commercial area. to us, and the precision of its ways is becoming The expressway links to a row of lights from the underground Neither can exist on its own – they are stronger and stronger. Yet everyday life is made up of parking facility. Incoming interdependent. traversing various buildings. Living space is constituted traffic from the car park obstructs the expressway with Such existence seems anti-aesthetic, anti- by connections between various adjacent environmental a tollgate. historic, anti-planning, anti-classification. conditions rather than by any single building. Can we

Right It releases the architecture of overdefinition draw out the potential of this situation and project this Nama-con apartment house towards generic ‘building’. The buildings of into the future? If so, it may be possible to counter the Function: Concrete batch plant and company housing Made in Tokyo are not necessarily after such typical Japanese Modernist public facilities that are cut Site: Himon-ya, Meguro-ku ends but simply arrive at this position through off from their surroundings and packaged into a single Aligned with Meguro Street, near the Daiei supermarket, their desperate response to the here and box. We can place attention on the issue of how usage the shiny silver concrete plant now. This is what is so refreshing about them. (software) can set up a network, where public facilities and the truck drivers’ concrete housing are docked together. can be dispersed into the city whilst interlapping with The mixers wait at the bottom Adjacency and ‘Environmental Unit’ the adjacent environment. Spaces for living can of the plant to service the city. The packaging together Our interest is in the diverse methods of making penetrate into various urban situations and thereby of the work place and home and using coherent environments within the city, set up new relations amongst them. The possibilities creates a veritable man–machine system. together with the urban ecologies found there. for urban dwelling expand.

42 43 billboard car street lights driving school car

practice slopes for handbrake starts supermarket

Super car school Function: Supermarket and driving school Site: Kanamachi, Katsushika-ku A driving school is planted on top of the double layer of the supermarket. The site includes parcels of other people's land that could not be purchased. This condition of the site, framed by the curve of the railway, is expressed directly in the extruded volume of the building. Above the entry ramp are framed the practice slopes for handbrake starts.

44 45 On/Off There is an overlapping of three orders that set up the ‘environmental unit’, based on category, structure and use. If we again take the example of the hybrid between expressway and department store, the traffic above and the shopping below simply share the same structure yet belong to different categories and bridge temple trees graveyard have no use relation. In other words it is only apartment roof terrace temple (temple forecourt) structural order that unites the two. Maybe it is

not that this example is impossible to evaluate internal staircase

within the existing cultural value system, (sacred approach) but rather that the sense of unity is full of dubiousness – the essential reason why this example is da-me architecture. We can say that when any of the three orders mentioned above are operating, they are ‘on’, whereas when they do not take effect they are car piloti ‘off’. This system starts to incorporate all the value poles that seem to form such an important

role in the recognition, and indeed the very apartment block car parking Opposite left existence, of da-me architecture. We can Pachinko Cathedral recognise that the examples of Made in Tokyo Function: Pachinko Parlour and shark banks almost always comprise some aspect of Site: Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku being ‘off’. In contrast to this, the magnificent These are three separate buildings that take on the buildings of architects are ‘on’, ‘on’, ‘on’. Though appearance of Paris's Notre the Parisian streetscape and the modern city Dame when viewed as a single entity. In the place of stone are often held to be in opposition, the abundant sculptures and reliefs, examples of Made in Tokyo show that they are displaying scenes from the Bible, the complex pulses with not necessarily bipolar. They simply exist within information banners advertising a score of ‘on’ and ‘off’. its internal activities. The side tower buildings are almost In any case, surely too much ‘on’ cannot be completely let out to ‘shark good for our mental landscape. If all three banks’, loaning money at high interest rates. Here a biological orders are switched ‘on’, there is only one system of the metropolis is possibility for achieving satisfying architecture. formulated as a single symmetrical package – an However, if we allow any or all aspects to be endless cycle of losing money at sign ‘off’, then suddenly the possibilities for variation s the Pachinko Parlour, loaning money, only to lose it again. explode to eight (two to the power of three). This establishes a huge release for designers. Opposite right shark bank shark bank Graveyard tunnel When we say that we can sense the pulse of Function: Graveyard and tunnel Tokyo in the ‘da-me architecture’ that includes Site: Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku Around the area of the crossing some aspect of being ‘off’, this means that even of Killer Street and Stadium though the urban space of this city appears Street, the road slices under the temple graveyard. Nicknamed to be chaotic, in exchange, it contains a quality 'ghost tunnel', the Ikeda of freedom for production. medium has named this a psychic spot. Furthermore, we hope in our design work to clearly represent possibilities for the urban future Right Apartment mountain temple by being consistent with the principal findings of pachinko parlour Function: Buddhist temple and our research. Observations can only gain a certain private apartment housing Site: Daimachi, Kanagawa-ku, clarity once they have been studied through Yokohama-shi design and vice versa. And such interactive Near Tanmachi Station on the Toyoko train line is the Konpira feedback between observation and design is Shrine. The ceremonial route an efficient method through which to contribute passes the internal staircase of an apartment block, across the to the city through the scale of architecture. 4 apartment roof and bridge to the main temple hall under waterproof sheeting. Translated by Marika Neustpny

46 47 In his writings, Chuang-tzu, the Chinese mystic and philosopher of the 4th century BC, describes a king named Chaos. One day, Chaos invited the king of the south and the king of the north to a meal. As Chaos in fact did not have eyes or a nose, in return for the meal the two kings opened one orifice each day for Chaos, but he died the moment the seventh orifice was opened. The present-day Japanese word for ‘chaos’ (konton) has its roots in his name. There are said to be three sources for research into chaos in the West: Poincare's problem of the motion Participating in the ‘volatile of three or more astronomical bodies, Reynolds’s problem of fluids, and the ergodic hypothesis of aggregate’ of the contemporary Boltzmann, all of which date from the second half to city, Japanese architect the end of the 19th century. In the 20th century, quantum theory and the theory of relativity took Nobuyaki Furuya has come to centre stage and chaos again began to attract attention only in 1963 when Lorenz published his work regard every building as an on heat convection currents. Interestingly, it was in that year that Arata Isozaki published The Theory of addition rather than an isolated Process Planning on transformations in architecture. object. With reference to his own projects, he explains We live in the extremely how architecture might be volatile aggregate called performed as an acupuncture- like procedure, providing the contemporary city points in the urban chaos. and attempt to deal with an extremely complex part of that aggregate called contemporary architecture.

We live in the extremely volatile aggregate called the contemporary city and attempt to deal with an extremely complex part of that aggregate called contemporary architecture. Modern architecture in the 20th century taught us to think of buildings as things standing in isolation in a characterless, transparent open space. However, an actual site has a surrounding environment, its own seasonal, social and cultural climates, and its own historical background. Any building, even one that is newly constructed, is in the nature of an addition, if we look at it in a broad context. Buildings are points in the chaos of the city. What I have in mind is using those points to perform on the city an acupuncture-like procedure.

48 49 Railway Market in Bangkok (Research)

The ‘railway market’, a street in the suburbs of Bangkok, looks like a typical Asian market with its many stalls and bustling activity. However, suddenly a diesel-electric locomotive enters the scene. All stalls Mongolian Ger (Research) are shut up and the crowds dodge out of the way while it passes. As soon as the train has left, the situation is The traveller rides his horse towards a yurt, restored as before. which appears as a white dot in the grassland, This solution is of a kind that we (=planer) never like an oasis in the desert. This point of indicate. The reason for the sharing of this place as singularity, alone in a wide open space, draws an exciting market and a railway is that it was never people to it. It would be just a point of transition Sendai Mediatheque planned to be used in this way. It was not designed if other people were not there. If there is an Design Competition (1995) as a market. People find alternative ways with the encounter with other people, this may lead to passage of time. new developments. Ultimately, architecture This proposal is for a cultural complex Even great vortices (=chaos) can be traced back to serves as a beginning, causing the unexpected containing a library, audiovisual library and small events. A small fracture can eventually lead to encounter of people who were unrelated to one exhibition space, designed with a total area the destruction of an entire wall, and a slight error in another until this point in time. of 20,000 square metres. The site faces Jozenjo- copying genes can lead to the sudden emergence of a It can be said that the result is a city that has dori, a beautiful avenue lined with zelkova trees, new species. When a new, unexpected activity comes various problems stiffened, philosophically, by in Sendai city. Except during the winter, the into being, flourishes and establishes itself in a space the concept of ‘settling down’. It is necessary to climate here is mild enough for people to stroll that may not look like much at first glance, some event distribute the house outside/inside the city, and around without the need to separate the facility is likely to have provided the opportunity for this the production function might have to be into three sections or layers according to process to unfold. distributed in a similar manner. In addition, individual functions. This would result in the The late John Hejduk was widely known to have the media technology that develops rapidly building becoming a ‘Forest of Media’, valued ‘beginnings’ above all else. This was an might enable a decentralised residence that encouraging visitors to enjoy encounters with expression of the fact that through continual abstraction moves economically. This research unexpected persons or sources as they take he sought opportunities to ‘poetically activate’ the investigates the possibility of a decentralised a stroll inside. architectural spaces that Modernism had produced. residence because it is assumed to be fluid, All the books are controlled by computers, The colonnade intended to eliminate the perception as is the city. The domestic animal is deployed so visitors can read books and return them of a series of walls, the Mondrian-type plan suggestive to move household goods in a severe, natural anywhere they like. These activities are of a square cut out of an infinitely extended space, free environment: in the present age a Mongolian expected to generate small features of various forms protruding from a wall – these were autonomous nomad looking at CNN and MTV can serve as a regions in one building, which like climate are elements generated from the overall uniform space. good case-study. always changing. 50 51 Hyper-Spiral Project (1996) We call it the ‘Hyper-Spiral’ building based on its minimum shadow and allow the comfortable to rapidly carry people or commodities between the configuration of a double belt-like structure rising use of freed ground space. Within, the entire ground and the upper levels. An Image of a highly three-dimensional city, and intertwining in the form of a spiral. building forms a long, continuous easy slope, Tokyo is proud of its efficiency and Asian facilitating evacuation routes and waste The Fins and the Sky-Canyon chaotic accumulation yet, at the same time, is Incremental Construction and Use disposal and recycling systems reaching from The fins of the slabs are settled at a pitch of 7.5 metres still beset by typical urban problems such as The chosen site surrounds Tokyo station, a culturally below ground to its highest points. Such a slope around the whole of the sponge core. Between them, large quantities of waste, high energy mature but sparsely populated area in the city centre. will also accommodate nonmotorised wheeled numerous subdivisions are possible, creating two- consumption, a shortage of residential areas The three-dimensional city is to be constructed over traffic such as bicycles and wheelchairs, and storey units in a domino system in the air, and providing and traffic congestion. Also typical is the the existing, without demolition, and constructed also the transfer of commodities and energy smaller-scale areas for residential use or any other hindrance to settlement in its cultural centres incrementally along with the conversion of the existing resources. The differential in air pressure over activity requiring sunshine and views. In contrast to this due to the high costs of housing, while its fabric to residential use. such a vertical distance may also be employed is the large void space between the cores, the ‘Sky- traditional semidefined border conditions are Transportation systems of the Hyper-Spiral (local and to this end. Canyon’, which may be used for larger-scale interior slowly being eliminated by contemporary semilocal rail lines, roads and pathways) are to be directly units. redevelopment projects. connected to the existing system: one end of the belt at Advantages of High-Rise Levels In an attempt to make a city of international the platform of Tokyo station, and the other leading to a More stable environmental conditions at the Circulation value, not only economically and politically but point below ground to the metropolitan highway. In future, upper levels, such as continuous wind and lower Transport within the Hyper-Spiral is of various ranges also in a cultural sense, places must remain for a new form of water-based transport, the Techno-Super fluctuations in temperature, are potential and speeds, employing multideck elevators leading to residents, culture and education. In this project, Liner, will also easily be connected to this network. exploitable factors, as is the vertical layering of the ground, sky trams within the building, conveyors,

We are now aware of the meaninglessness and futility of building high-rise buildings for the competitive sake of their height alone, and it is not the purpose of the project to simply achieve a 1,000 metres benchmark. What is the goal, however, is a city that is three-dimensional and porous. This image of the city will demonstrate how we may arrest the incessantly spreading city, while creating a new stage for urban culture in the next generation.

a ‘highly three-dimensional’ city is presented, The 13 pillars of the spiral’s structural system have related activities of production, consumption and skywalks and corridors. The multideck elevator linking made possible through the use of technology their foundations at the level of the metro station. recycling. Thus garbage, prepared and the upper storeys with the ground is a particularly large enabling construction to a height of 1,000 Under present aerial restrictions, building heights are composted, fertilises upper horticultural spaces, and rapid conveyance system, which can exist at any metres, and thereby enabling the amelioration of restricted to 300 metres but this is to be addressed in and this more compact model of a contained pillar and reach any floor. It is a 60-metre chain of the city of Tokyo. conjunction with the long-range development plan of an cycle is to be similarly employed in the use of air 7 to 8 units, 7.5 metres long (the height of the fin) that Conventionally, great investment is directed aerial traffic system. Initial construction of the Hyper- and water collected from the surrounding sky. reaches ground level and the existing metro system, towards horizontal distribution and conveyance, Spiral will be below this 300-metre restriction, and Conveyance is to be reduced to a minimum in which are connected horizontally by the sky-tram at great expense both initially and through will later grow to its 1,000-metre height occupied by favour of local purification, use and recycling. systems. This is the main traffic system within the subsequent costs of maintenance of residences and other programmatic services utilising Towards this end, the structure of the building building and is hung from the base of the sponge core infrastructural systems like expressways media technologies. It will be publicly owned and rented itself, the ‘sponge core’, has the ability to retain at 5,000-metre intervals. It can then be connected to the throughout the city. The project attempts to to private individuals and organisations, divided into water, provide a pipeless infrastructure and existing transportation system in the long-range plan. decrease this horizontal transfer of commodities smaller or larger units reserved in times of need for decrease vibration. It is a second ground soil and in favour of the vertical, and layers related domestic, business or government, and also provide for employs mechanisms for recycling resources, The City of the Next Generation services such as electricity generation and waste common facilities such as schools and hospitals. power generation and resource purification. We are now aware of the meaninglessness and futility incineration or productive green space with of building high-rise buildings for the competitive sake consumer facilities for the distribution of A Porous City Hyper-Pillars of their height alone, and it is not the purpose of the products. This hyper-building is not a single A transformation of the high-rise type built as a series The V-shaped pillars, called ‘hyper-pillars’, form project to simply achieve a 1,000 metres benchmark. towering high-rise building but a high-rise of floor plates in a vertical box, inefficient in regards not only the structural system but also that of What is the goal, however, is a city that is three- network with numerous ground-level entry to ventilation and sunshine, will result in the Hyper- necessary systems of vertical conveyance and dimensional and porous. This image of the city will points. It has no dead-ends of circulation or Spiral porous city. With many unoccupied spaces, emergency services. Each standing point of the demonstrate how we may arrest the incessantly of infrastructure, and is easily accessible for semitransparent and allowing the passage of sun and pillar is below the centre of gravity of its load, spreading city, while creating a new stage for urban restoration in the case of an emergency. air through the building, the Hyper-Spiral will create with the conveyance systems arranged around it culture in the next generation. 4

52 53 Gaikoku Mura: Japanese Foreign Country Villages

54 55 Photographing the Gaikoku Mura foreign country villages in Japan is part of an ongoing project for photographer Sue Barr. Her photographs challenge the popular stereotypical view of the villages as architecturally insignificant leisure parks, as well as the wider Western perception of the Japanese as purveyors of cultural reproduction, whether in fashion, music or design. Bringing images such as those of a replica of Stratford-on-Avon at Maruyama Shakespeare Park back to London for an exhibition at the Architectural Association, she was able to question the viewers’ understanding of what constitutes a fake.

During the economic bubble of the late 1980s, Glucks Königreich in Hokkaido used 400-year-old Gaikoku Mura foreign country villages began to paving stones imported from Berlin and Dresden, and appear throughout Japan. These were developed includes a full-scale reproduction of the Buckenburg as a means of revitalising regional economies Castle in Bavaria. The Maruyama Shakespeare Park in and feeding Japan’s interest in foreign cultures. Chiba is a re-creation of the house in Stratford-on-Avon Gaikoku Mura – Japanese for foreign where Shakespeare was born, and is an exact replica country village – is a specific type of cultural of how the house would have looked in Shakespeare’s park found only in Japan. Examples range from time; traditional building materials, methods and Canada World and Swiss Village in Hokkaido skilled craftspeople have been employed in its to Russian Village in Niigata and Huis Ten construction. Due to the high attention to detail, its Bosch in Kyushu, which is an ecologically designers claim that it is as authentic as the original sound modern city albeit one disguised as house, standing thousands of miles away in Stratford, a 17th-century Dutch village. which has suffered 300 years of deterioration. These parks, which are all too often The house in Chiba is ‘unsullied by the passage dismissed as theme parks, particularly from of time and the changes of the later occupants’. a European perspective where the term is It has been argued that Gaikoku Mura evolved to associated with roller coasters and childish enable Japanese tourists to experience authentic Previous spread amusement rides, actually display a high degree glimpses of a foreign culture without the hassles Huis Ten Bosh Dutch Village, Nagasaki, Japan. of sophistication in their reproductions, though of leaving Japan, but this stereotype simply further they are replicas of a Europe that exists only perpetuates misunderstandings of the complexity Opposite Marksburg Castle, Ueno as an image. All exhibit a detailed rendering of Japanese culture. German Culture Village, of the vernacular architecture of the country The extraordinary levels of attention to detail elevate Okinawa, Japan. in question, and extend this re-creation to Gaikoku Mura to a new form of cultural reproduction Above include national people, produce, musicians and challenge our preconceived ideas of authenticity. Aerial view of herb garden, Maruyama Shakespeare Park, and performers, all of which work together Repackaging culture as a leisure activity has blurred Chiba, Japan. to enhance the educational value of the parks. the lines between education and entertainment. 4

57 oversimplifying to reduce the cause of change to something that often leads to a transgression of the one single force. Change has no final form, only norms through deviations from the usual path. intermediate products in the process of Choice can be regulated but cannot be completely transformation. Change does not necessarily lead controlled. It is provided through a matrix of to growth or unidirectional progresses, however consideration in which the existing conditions as well as the shifting of forces and the subsequent the imposed forces are taken into account. transformation of systems present. Choice unveils the power of creativity of the public to achieve what is often misunderstood as given. Looking Connection at the process of selection, individual vision can be Connection is about constructing relationships reorganised and reformulated from the fragments. between systems. System varies in scale and While the external and internal constraints are revealed nature, and presents along the spectrum through the reading of individual choices, a maximum of between polarities, be this physical or virtual, possibilities can also be attained through creating micro or macro. A beeping sound in the flexibility under the same conditions. underground train during rush hour can induce a phone search by the crowd. The system of Coexistence wireless communication acts on the system of Coexistence enhances a mix to become a total public space. Altogether such a scenario reflects system. A rough view of Hong Kong is like a single the issue of congestion, mass displacement, whole with hiatuses carved out from the monolithic collective behaviour and pattern of living. Here, city-building mass. Zooming in, it is composed of connection is an instrument that relates a matrix fragments of events and physicalities. We call these of references. urban fragments (city bytes}. Often, they are in huge Connection confirms the presence of a quantities and scales, with a great variety of life boundary by which relationships are created spans. They are self-developing at all times. The between two or more disparate entities. Or in richness of these city bytes is generated through Hong Kong architect Gary Chang advocates a framework for a other words, boundary separates and at the collective creativity. They invade every part of the city, pragmatic reading of the intensified city. Four of Chang’s projects are same time connects. The fluidic nature of transforming the original use of space and boundary shifts, dissolves and associates with revitalising the dead areas of the city. Sometimes illustrated below, putting theory into practice and elaborating on such distant elements or phenomena, creating an they are totally planned. themes as immaterialism, connection, change and coexistence. intensive spatial montage. The coexisting approach favours adaptation instead Connection is created through the of imposition, reuse instead of erasure, diversity implemented interface. It creates a platform for instead of homogeneity. Thus city bytes are highly interaction. The peripheral plane is itself the adaptive because they are generated from specific Conditions: How the City Intensifies Change connecting device, triggering unforeseen spatial urban conditions. They respect the existing conditions Intensity describes the state of things, literally a Force is the immaterial cause of change. Cityscape is a experience and a subversive visual–information and seek the neglected potential of those conditions. kind of immaterial density that pervades the city product of an infinite number of different forces coming relationship that animates the presumably static They fragmentise the overstructured city and provide as a general culture. It is vigorous yet does not into play at the same point in time. Social, economic, public space. new energy to fuel its self-generation. Coexistence is necessarily embody a physical form. On the one political, cultural or historical forces act from different Connection evokes a network of conjunction. a viable strategy for the development from ambition hand, the extreme form of urban intensity is directions, and the change that results is directional, Space flows in a fluidic manner and is not to economy. represented by the massiveness and rapid pointing to ideals about the urban space. After all, constrained by an independent edifice. It results Coexistence is an open system that operates as a occurrence of (and between) individual events. change is about the survival of society. in a separate system while hybridising with other means to urban sustainability. In contrast to evolution, This particularly refers to events of gigantic In addition, the concept of change is intricately existing systems. which is a transformation within one entity, scale that disappear without trace. associated with time. Time is a distinctive dimension Connection in its most brutal manner is sustainability transforms with a network of interrelated Below we propose a framework of reading that has its own internal logic of space: a space that is revealed in the act of overlapping and systems that work as a totality of difference. based on four concepts – change, choice, not measured in a physical sense but by an immaterial penetration. Surfaces multiply by the making of connection and coexistence – to further calibration – duration. As physical space provides a additional layers and entities. Every surface is Conclusion elaborate the idea of intensified city with medium of locating objects, time provides a medium maximised to enhance visual connection and, The above discussion is an attempt to delineate the reference to Hong Kong. These are not in for changes to take place. Yet unlike an object that eventually, to raise its commercial value through logic of a city’s operation where efficiency and intensity sequence, nor do they represent any hierarchy. occupies space, there is no full saturation of time. The the amount of visual contact. result through a more improvised than structured They are in relationship with one another, intensity of change can be infinite, always offering the model. Though the three-dimensional cityscape is though the relationship is not explicitly linear. possibility for further intensification with various scales Choice breathtaking, it is the non-visual-based pragmatism Each of the four concepts is not strictly a and durations. Choice is a representation of both individual behind that effects such realisation. After all, it is this cause nor an effect of the phenomena Forces are generated from shifting concerns and and collective desire. Selection is a responsive 4-C approach that is able to avoid any kind of preclusive identified below, but they do provide some ideals in the course of time. They are external factors yet act allowing for the identification of existing visualisation of an urban landscape, and more relevant points of reference to understand the can cause implosions within a system. Though it is potentials and giving room for the importantly allows for an ultimate escape from any local phenomena. possible to identify the sources of the forces, it is always reconfiguration of possible outcomes. This is disguised ambition of an ideal city.

58 59 Gary Chang, My Own Apartment, created through the multiple operations of the Hong Kong, China, 1998 partitions, lighting and mobile furniture. All the The bachelor dwells within a squeezed space mundane necessities of bachelor life – books, of 330 square feet. A compact and efficient CDs, clothing, pictures, stereo, videos – are arrangement of kitchenette, bathroom and stacked on a chrome factory-shelving system and laundry area liberates the remaining space hidden discreetly behind floating white curtains. The for the various programmes of bachelor life. central space becomes the actual space for living/ The dominance of white, translucent and working/eating/sleeping/chatting/dressing/reading. transparent materials, in combination with Blue fluorescent tubes are carefully placed to wash changing ambient lighting, all seemingly the floor with an unearthly glow, while bright begin to ‘dematerialise’ the apartment. uplighting articulates structural members. In contrast, the only full-height object is The main aperture of the front window offers the tower of solid cherry-wood that different ‘views’ to the world beyond – the actual view incorporates the movie projector, refrigerator out of the window or ‘through’ the large-scale movie and kitchen, wash basins and laundry screen to the fantasy world of Hollywood, the real machines. Ultimate spatial flexibility is world of news or the electronic world of the Internet. living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading / living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading / living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading / living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading / living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading / living / working / eating / sleeping / chatting / dressing / reading /

60 61 Suitcase House Hotel, Badaling Shuiguan, bathroom, kitchen and storage, there are a series of Beijing, 2001–2002 chambers for specific use and mode: a meditation Suitcase House Hotel originated from the chamber (with a glazed floor looking down the valley experimental development the Commune by below), music chamber, library, study and lounge, the Great Wall in Beijing. The developers of as well as a fully equipped sauna. the project invited 12 younger-generation Asian Imagine. During the day a couple stays in the architects, from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Suitcase. They could open up all the sliding partitions Singapore, Thailand, mainland China and Hong to enjoy a totally indoor open space with a dimension Kong, to independently design 11 houses and of 44 metres x 5 metres. Later in the day they might a club in the valley at the foot of the Great Wall. open up a series of chambers according to their The development consists of two phases. The mood, for example to listen to music in the music first phase of the Commune is a guesthouse- chamber, read a book in the library or meditate on hotel community while the second phase will the glazed floor. In the evening, when more guests be weekend villa-homes. arrive, the entire space turns into a lounge for parties, Casting a question mark on the proverbial celebrations and other events. Rooms can then be image of the house, Suitcase House Hotel gradually formulated when night falls. A maximum attempts to rethink the nature of intimacy, of seven guest rooms could be formed, which could privacy, spontaneity and flexibility. It is a simple accommodate up to 14 guests if the party goes on demonstration of the desire for ultimate till late and they need to stay overnight. adaptability, in pursuit of a proscenium for The envelope is a stratification of vertical layers. infinite scenarios, a plane of sensual (p)leisure. The outer skin is a wrap of full-height double-glazed The dwelling represents a stacking of strata. folding doors while the inner layer comprises a series The middle stratum embodies a reincarnated of screens forming a matrix of openings. The abstract piano nobile par excellence for habitation, facade pattern is thereby rooted in its user-oriented activity and flow. Adapting a nonhierarchical operational logic. The dwelling is provided with layout with the help of mobile elements multiple entrances, each with equal status, and each provided by the envelope, it transforms itself leading to a rereading of the spatial organisation. readily according to the nature of the activities, To blur the boundaries between house, interior and number of inhabitants and personal furniture, the entire structure and elements are preferences for degrees of enclosure and monotonically clad in timber inside and outside of the privacy. A metamorphic volume, it slides steel structure supported by, and cantilevered out from, effortlessly from an open space to a sequence the concrete base. They also house facilities including of rooms, depending on the inhabitants’ specific a pantry, maid’s quarter, boiler room and the sauna. requirements. Each room is then differentiated The dwelling is located at the head of the Nangou by the provision of a unique amenity. Valley. To maximise views to the prominent Great Wall The bottom stratum acts as a container for and solar exposure in the continental temperate dedicated spaces. Compartments are concealed climate, a north–south orientation has been adopted. by a landscape of pneumatically assisted floor It is possible to see the Great Wall from all major panels. At any point in time only the essential spaces within the dwelling, and also from the totally elements required will have a spatial presence. free and unobstructed roof terrace that is accessed Imagine. During the day a couple stays in Apart from the basic chambers of bedroom, from below via a pull-down staircase. the Suitcase. They could open up all the sliding partitions and enjoy a totally indoor open space with a dimension of 44 metres x 5 metres. Later in the day they might listen to music in the music chamber, read a book in the library or meditate on the glazed floor. In the evening the entire space turns into a lounge for parties, celebrations and other events. Rooms can then be gradually formulated when night falls.

62 63 Mega iAdvantage Datacentre, experiment’; ‘the Typical Floor Project – loop The Lobby Project silkscreen glass and acoustic panels. Within this Chai Wan, Hong Kong, 1999–2001 experiment’; and ‘the Headquarters Project – line The main lobby comprises linear zones that simulated ‘wire frame’ stands a glass box housing the Mega iAdvantage, the first dedicated high-rise experiment’. The series of experiments are an attempt suggest a perpendicular direction of movement. network operation centre of the corporation. The datacentre in Asia, is located in an old industrial to rethink the relationship between spatiality and Two gigantic free-form objects, one in timber, hardware zones are located on the lower level while area in Hong Kong Island East. Constructed materiality through the extensive use of reflectivity, the other in aluminium, are designed as the office spaces are stacked on top with an internal on foundations originally intended for another transparency and opacity. security zones. The former acts as a security ramp connecting the two. building, the 33-storey datacentre was partition with a waiting bench while the latter completed in just 380 days after design The Facade Project incorporates surveillance equipment. The other The Typical Floor Project inception. In terms of spatial allocation it To ease the construction process within the time linear zones are the gallery, entrance, lift lobby Floors containing hardware find expression in a rhythm has a hardware to person ratio of 7:3. The constraint, indentation of the building mass is and the building-management control centre. of alternate loops of reflective materials (mirrors and development of the project was ‘organic’ in minimised, resulting in a rectangular block with a The drastically different touches for each zone galvanised-steel sheets) and timber. Variations in so far as the programme evolved during the podium following the site boundary. The building provide a montage of various spatialities in the reflectivity animate the movement along the 50-metre- course of construction. envelope is divided into five surfaces: four facades small lobby space. long corridor. In terms of the design approach, the and a podium. Each is designed with its own datacentre demonstrates our interest in autonomous logic and results in a diversity of visual The Headquarters Project M&E Design fundamental architectural elements. Surface impressions depending on the direction of approach. The headquarters, Megatop, located on the top Mega iAdvantage involves very sophisticated electrical is the primary element that visually defines the The main (south) facade is clad in industrial two floors, is conceived as an interplay of fins (a and mechanical facilities. In order to solve the material presence. The formation of surface corrugated-steel panels with standardised wire-frame model) and surfaces with a variety problems of electromagnetic disturbance, the plant and its subsequent breakdown into zones, aluminium ribbon windows, which gives a shiny of transparencies. These spaces are generated rooms are centrally located on the ground floor, podium loops and lines are also explored. effect in the afternoon sun. A graphic pattern of from a matrix of lines. All surfaces become and roof. Back-up generators and uninterruptible Given the limited time available and the vertical strips in inexpensive ceramic tile is applied abstract from afar, while their materiality power supply (UPS) are equipped to ensure normal absence of a frozen brief, we consider the on the east facade. The west facade, which is visible emerges at close proximity. operation in case of power failure. The FM200 and datacentre not as a single project but as a only from afar, is finished in texture spray paint with Starting from the double-space atrium, the Inergen gaseous flooding firefighting systems have summation of all the possible projects a huge signboard on the roof. The least prominent lines form the outer layer of the internal facade been carefully arranged according to the distribution of generated on this plot of land. Under this rear facade is designed in black tile. The streamline and run three-dimensionally along the electrical and mechanical facilities. Air-conditioning ‘mutating’ brief, Mega iAdvantage is podium is covered with black perforated aluminium longitudinal axis. The line pattern varies in design is also a prior consideration. The indoor categorised into ‘the Facade Project – surface panels with silver supergraphics and a translucent different areas and in different materials temperature and relative humidity must be constantly experiment’; ‘the Lobby Project – zone Plexiglass light-wall at street level. including aluminium fins, steel baffles, carpets, maintained at 2–20ºC and 10–50 per cent respectively.

64 65 Hong Kong Arts Centre Renovation, brochure holders. To further enhance full flexibility, 1999–2000 a series of mobile units are placed throughout Within the constrained conditions of an existing different floors to inhabit the space according to structure, and under an extremely tight budget, different functional requirements. this project attempts to redefine the space of Finally, a light box is built on top of the existing the approximately 700 square metres of floor stair balustrade, forming a continuous spiral of white area of the atrium of the Hong Kong Arts light that connects the whole project. The light-box Centre. Four storeys high, the atrium, which balustrade, embracing the existing handrails, also is composed of various foyers to different becomes a gigantic spiral directory for easy performance spaces, is underused for most orientation to the performance spaces. The entrances of the time. Our idea is to open up the become floating planes made of horizontal aluminium opportunities for this formerly leftover space by louvres with a plane of yellow light separating them inserting different flexible programmes and to from the wall. Another layer of suspended wires achieve a crossover between bar (leisure), retail supports light fixtures highlighting the existing waffle facilities (shopping) and exhibition (art) without structure. A layer of high-level movable cantilever disturbing the integrity of the multilevel space. target lights on the wall channels forms another The first layer of the renovation is to datum specially dedicated to the illumination of art transform the whole internal wall into a works during exhibitions. The glossy epoxy floor continuous skin covered with metallic paint. at all levels gives a neutral touch to the atrium in A pattern of horizontal metal channels is general while making the information sandwiched attached on top of the wall to connect the between the channel wall and the light box stand different parts of the foyer, as well as providing out. Along the passage from ground floor to fourth a system to display art work and to install floor, the renovated atrium becomes a site in which different accessories such as table-top intensified events can take place.4

67 Pearl River Delta: Lean Planning, Thin Patterns Based in Hong Kong, French architects Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix of MAP Office run a collaborative studio that incorporates architecture and the visual arts. Here, they describe their current research into ‘lean planning’, which focuses on the impact of economic production and distribution specifically in the ‘Made in China’ or Pearl River Delta region of southern China.

The southern China metropolis, only vaguely as part of an increasing homogeneous body. Accretion perceived in most of the world at this time, is – the three-dimensional adding, piling and layering likely to become the most representative of unrelated material – has many implications when urban face of the twenty-first century. it comes to interpreting the structure of the land and — Manuel Castells1 the potential to plan it. Environment and landscape are transformed under a multitude of pressures – The purpose of this essay is to characterise a natural, artificial and immaterial – and these region harshly described by Rem Koolhaas as transformations affect not only the stability of the 'an urban condition free of urbanity'.2 In reality, ground but anything planned onto/into it. the expression of this new form of urbanity and Accretion shapes and monitors human activities. spatial condition related to the notion of In this condition, regulation of flow, control of water development is embedded in specific cycles of levels to protect land that has been gained from the production and distribution. As a consequence, sea, irrigation and drainage, control of sand and salt the dynamic and multidimensional forces that components, are the first preconditions for introducing spread across the surface of the territory are to life and developing the liquid land into a network of be explored and qualified. Those characteristics, settlements. This series of actions on the one hand visible traces marking the land, appear as presents an open system capable of generating new paradigms of contemporary civilisation, and are land, but has also contributed to a high degree of evident in the simple inventory of a commodified instability and uncertainty in the region. society labelled ‘Made in China’. The new capitalist mode of production Study 1 – Port succumbs to the process of globalisation, not The regional marine transport network is intrinsically only from an economic and political viewpoint, related to social and economic growth. In 1757, port but also through empirical knowledge. cities were the sole places where trading with the West Therefore, the genealogy of the Pearl River Delta was accepted, turning Guangzhou and smaller cities (PRD) appears as progressive creative forces of into hectic trade centres. Due to both domestic and development. In this particular context, the foreign trade, these cities rapidly developed into a multiple processes of constructing a system that powerful international commercial network. At present, includes an infinite addition of layers encounter more than 40 million containers pass through the PRD fields of reflection that are theoretically and every year, making the region the world’s busiest/ ideologically expressed by Postmodernism as largest port. Previous spread Population densities in the the fate of an epoch. Corresponding to the As the physical centre of the region, the Pearl River Pearl River Delta region. characteristics of this moment, and because is a place characterised by intense and dynamic

Opposite and next page of its particular history and geography, the PRD activities. Busy to the extreme, water provides the Delta population represents a synthesis of universal elements infrastructure for various marine traffic, such as ferries, Guangdong’s population is bound to the same regional belonging to a global flow but with the specifics liners, crane barges (lighters) and container cargo. strength, a place traditionally of a local territory. Divided into parking, roads and highways to segregate open to foreign exchange and non-Chinese trade. The different kinds of vessels, the harbour is a medium for majority of the overseas 1 Delta Geography transporting both men and merchandise. Chinese population originates from this region and has Asset 1 – Delta Land progressively built a powerful Formed by the convergence of three rivers, the Outline 1 – Accretion and strategic network to expand this system abroad. PRD is a transitional space between land and How to read what is not yet written? How can we sea, where water – through the silt and debris understand a condition that is lived by millions of Top Pearl River Delta region. it carries – has extended the land into the sea. people, but still not completely materialised? Space This form of growth by gradual external is inundated. It is not possible to distinguish exactly Bottom Urban network in the Pearl addition, fusion or inclusion indicates that what is land and what is floating, what is built and what River Delta region. accreted material can be either distinct or melt is vegetation, what is building material and what is

70 71 Border Train GSZ Highway Highway Roads

rubbish, what is structure and what is not. The land Study 2 – Clan Outline 2 - Floating Population and the water’s edge may not be clearly defined, Rural enterprises are an essential part of What is the actual population of the PRD? How to sort allowing the possibility for accretion in either direction. economic and urban development within the who is local, who is floating? In Shenzhen, the number Landscape on water, water on land. Where does the delta. Today there are plenty of small of migrant workers supposedly exceeds the local labour built environment exist? communities experiencing stronger economic force. What does this mean? How to map these cultural growth than the larger cities. Some villages fluctuations when space is conceived as a set of 2 Delta Population specialise in producing refrigeration equipment, relations constituted through social action? Clearly this Asset 2 – Delta Settlements some in air conditioning and others in umbrellas. extensive migrant network illustrates local, translocal A potential amphibian land, a delta is neither neutral This monoproductive culture is derived from 19th- and transregional movements as the major nor stable. With a rich agricultural soil, it offers an century systems of agroproduction and an characteristics of urban development in south China. ideal location for dense human settlements. interdependence between villages. Villages from further provinces are broken up, workers Populations started to occupy places at water Instead of encouraging diversification, are disconnected from urban centres yet they reconnect intersections and along natural navigation routes, economic reform resulted in the and re-form their original networks around the factory’s amongst the hills and on higher ground. hyperspecialisation of each unit and the move locale. This hidden urbanity, which lives off the energy Amalgamations of villages and towns were determined towards producing industrialised goods. of a population with an average age of 22, represents by community needs when the natural rate of Capitalising on their strategic location and the the necessary motor that powers the region. population growth justified them. All such demand for land on which to build factories, amalgamations were principally administrative; villages became the richest sources of the delta. 3 Delta Economy they did not require a new urban plan. With respect As familial responsibility replaced a collective Asset 3 – Delta Production to economic reform, formerly separate villages task force, land was divided and part of the Production networks in the PRD are not recent. Since 1830 and towns merged together to form a continuous production sold on the free market. Solidarity the topographic division of the territory has given birth to ‘built-up’ area along new infrastructural corridors. was abandoned for familial profit. A new type of a complex mosaic of land, each with specific production Delta population Guangdong’s population is bound to the same Above enterprise was created – one where materials, values. This division is the result of a massive exodus Above Life under the highway Transport infrastructure in regional strength, a place traditionally open to foreign Under the highway, there is a knowledge and machines are imported and absorbed by the various possibilities of agricultural the Pearl River Delta region. exchange and non-Chinese trade. The majority of the place where one can take a assembled in one place to be manufactured and commerce. Industries such as fishing and silkworm chair, order food and watch TV. Right overseas Chinese population originates from this region This is not only about selling exported. Today, when a village comprises 2,000 harvesting have evolved through symbiosis – mulberry Farms and industry as well as and has progressively built a powerful and strategic commodities but also official residents, there is a floating population trees provide a home to the silkworm while their falling humans and chickens coexist encouraging the masses to on the same plot of land. network to expand this system abroad. consume them. of 60,000 making it work. leaves are a source of food to fish in surrounding ponds.

72 73 It is very natural that these small villages developed from an agricultural production to an industrialised economy. The multiplication of rural enterprises, small towns and transport infrastructure are the main determinants of today’s organisation. This transition not only involved farming activity but also the size of plots and accessibility to water. This also extends to the erasure of surrounding peaks to fill ponds and create artificial planes that accommodate a growing infrastructure and urban settlements.

Study 3 – Reform Introduced in 1978, the ‘socialist market economy’ and ‘open door’ policy succeeded in transforming the economy; quiet villages were absorbed into a full-blown mega-urban area. As a catalyst to this transformation, the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) of Shenzhen and Zhuhai function like two experimental urban sponges for Hong Kong and Macau. Giving reality to the strategic concept of a ‘window’, the special zones reflect the image of ongoing reforms. They provide an experimental field to test China’s openness to the world, which began by shortening the distance between inland areas and Hong Kong’s international markets. Since the early 1980s, Hong Kong firms have relocated their factories, transforming first Shenzhen then further areas of the PRD,to create a vast manufacturing hinterland. This shift ranges from Above and below subcontracted production on behalf of large brand- Floating population owning firms in the USA, Europe or Japan, to a domestic Dormitories are annexed to the factories. These are six- to consumer market for locally branded goods. eight-storey buildings with rooms for eight women (in most cases) each, along corridors or Outline 3 – Made in China railed balconies with one How to scale the production of the capitalist economy? bathroom per room and a large balcony for airing clothes. How to combine technology and continuous manpower flow? Endless chains of assembly lines move the world’s merchandise. Millions of pairs of hands accelerate this movement. It never stops. Workers make a pause but machinery carries on. Stock is continuously replenished. Waste is recycled on other lines. Clients come back for more. ‘Made in China’ is sewed into clothes, stitched on shoes, printed on books, stamped on electronics and engraved on furniture. Labels with poor added value for the last 10 years are now becoming high-end products with the latest technology of production and skilled workers. MiC is the largest brand in the world.

4 Lean Production Asset 4 - Craft and Mass Production Above, top to bottom Life under the highway When Henry Ford implemented the first moving A number of entertainment assembly line in spring 1913, it marked the end of the islands are created by gathering a few chairs or craft era. The production of the Ford T in Detroit was folding a piece of fabric. The completely different from that of the traditional car- highway provides a roof, support for lighting and maker. Based on a very high level of standardisation electricity. in components and connections between elements,

74 75 and Taiichi Ohno to create the concept of lean production, known as the Toyota Production System. The just-in-time manufacturing approach was based essentially on waste reduction. Other aspects such as cost reduction, quality control and maximum flexibility differed radically from mass production. Maximising flow, eliminating waste and adding value to the product and workers are the prerequisites. No stock, no inventory, customisation of product, continuous improvement, flexible and interchangeable operations assure the success and superiority of the Japanese car-maker. The spatial organisation of lean production relies on a stable network of suppliers, small units of production which apply the same technique and become part of the family. Clusters and networks assure smooth production.

Outline 4 – Lean Planning How to map the unstable environment? How to respond Lean planning is attacking the boundaries to the most evanescent social phenomena? How to react to ‘Made in China’? that articulate urban space. The contour Lean planning is attacking the boundaries that lines of architecture are fading, and the articulate urban space. The contour lines of distinction between centre and periphery, architecture are fading, and the distinction between centre and periphery, interior and exterior, public and interior and exterior, public and private private are disappearing. Instead, a multilayered space are disappearing. Instead, a multilayered of flow encourages a multiplicity of archipelagos that space of flow encourages a multiplicity are connected by an efficient networked society under permanent control. This control appears at every level of archipelagos that are connected and infiltrates the production process as a continual by an efficient networked society under effort collectively managed. Operating at a global scale permanent control. with decentralised units of production, lean planning expresses a dynamic specific to the delta region.

Conclusion: Lean Planning Cycles of production and systems of distribution have Ford established the basis of mass production. over the centuries always been an emulator for This move coincided with the introduction of shaping human settlement. A strategic approach and new technology and machinery but also with politics of laissez faire adopted by PRD local- the development of scientific management government bodies and then implemented by introduced by the engineer Frederick Winslow planners, architects and developers, are in a sense Taylor in 1880. Taylorism was based on the most up-to-date form of planning. The region efficiency and control of every single aspect of has crystallised into a single urban entity based on production. Through the vertical integration of the opportunistic adoption of an efficient transport the factory, and the separation of production infrastructure built with private money to serve the and distribution, Ford was literally pushing well-distributed factory. With no particular concern the product directly into the shops. Modern for spatial sequence or articulation, these extensive architecture and city planning were largely flow lines constitute an effective strategy for Notes 1 Manuel Castells, The Rise of inspired by this rationalisation of mass colonisation, transforming the landscape into a the Network Society, production. series of polynuclear construction systems, therefore Blackwell (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, US), 1996, p 439. reinforcing the hybrid condition of the territory. Above 2 Rem Koolhaas, ‘City of Study 4 – Lean Production Within this configuration, access becomes a measure Lean production exacerbated difference’, in A Pandora’s box, the factory is Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffery The second move, or revolution, started with of the mobility and fluidity of urban expansion. In effect, a mute block from the outside. Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze the crisis affecting Japanese industrial these developments provide the necessary dynamics Only its logo or name on the Tsung Leong (eds) Great Leap facade inform the nature of the Forward , Taschen (Cologne), production after the Second World War. It took for a successfully competitive centre that is able to production here. 2001, p 27. from 1949 to 1970 for car producers Eiji Toyoda extend its influence into the territory. 4

76 77 Changing States Absorbing The plane touches down along the fairways of Climbing the tiered chedi (stupa) at Wat Arun, the the Royal Thai Air Force golf course between Temple of Dawn, a Buddhist pilgrim ascends various the arced stroke of a tee-off and a shuddering levels populated with demonic porcelain figures: coconut palm. Overbooked Bangkok human, animal, terrestrial and winged. Bangkok’s International Airport discharges passengers on royal temple and palace compounds are constructed to a steamy, remote tarmac as baggage handlers as symbolic and physical transcriptions of the silently watch from low grasshopper-like Triphumikata, the 14th-century Thai Theravada squatting positions, their limbs elastic sinews. Buddhist cosmological canon. Foreigners sense a molecular change at the The Triphumikata positions reborn souls within 34 moment of disembarkment as the thick air karmic levels of existence based on merit and demerit blankets them with a hot embrace: tropical delimited into three worlds: one formless, one free from Bangkok melts familiar epidermal boundaries sensuality, and the familiar realm of form and sense.2 and extends prior limits of muscular pliancy. Thai Buddhist social order employs this world-view to White reflective heat draws the last vapours synthesise vastly different forms of knowledge and from exposed patches of earth and human skin. practices. Cities here are ecumenical and tolerant, As the temperature approaches 40ºC, the city heterogeneous and cosmopolitan, populated with a vast generates its own local thunderstorms, but the diversity of ghostly and living creatures within heavenly pelting rain immediately evaporates upon and hellish realms, and all that lies in-between. This hitting the fiery tarmac. The concrete city’s polystructured and complexly layered ecology daily afterglow emits heat until the early historically accommodated Bodhisattvas, spirits and Bangkok: morning hours, when fresh gulf breezes finally gods of Buddhism, Animism and Brahmanism as well snake through its waterways and cool ground- as traders and missionaries from Japan to Holland. water filters up through hidden vegetated The Thai layered cosmos is not just a description of pockets, gently misting the waking megalopolis. the world, but of a belief in the simultaneity of material International arrival in Bangkok alerts an and immaterial existence on different planes. Like Liquid Perception embodied sense of changing states: instead of cinematic perception that observes an observer through Opposite the North’s familiar cycles of freeze and thaw, a semisubjective camera eye, Buddhist consciousness Chao Phraya River at the Rama IX Bridge. here one adjusts to annual and daily cycles of is both in the first person, immersed in the sensory ‘Tropical Bangkok melts familiar epidermal boundaries and extends heat-and-moisture exchange. A hardened gaze world, and located in an objective eye that surveys Above prior limits of muscular pliancy.’ For Brian McGrath, the changing The Bangna/Chonburi will crack in the heat of Bangkok, where neutrally from another vantage point. In his two cinema expressway. A dramatically absorbing, dissolving and evaporating cognition books, Deleuze presents the development of cinema as physical states that are experienced in Bangkok’s intensive tropical balanced concrete shading device for the promises ‘a more delicate and vaster an intricate semiotic, a cosmology of images and signs, climate become a metaphor and simile for the physical, cultural and hundreds of thousands of cars perception, a molecular perception, peculiar to which mirrors the development of contemporary that daily use the eight lanes 1 economic state of the city. of traffic below. a cine-eye’. consciousness. Technologically developing cultures

78 79 come to terms with becoming modern through Bangkok is not just a tourist centre or pleasure zone; and multimedia marketing environments in unfurls from the vantage point of its sinuous cinematic consciousness – full of false it is the economic engine of a newly industrialised the world. This is the space in which the youth meandering river and tributary canals. Modern continuity, aberrant movement, disproportion economy, a regional business centre for trade, of Thailand at every income level examines, development, however, has privileged road-building of scales, dissipation of centres – calling into industry and finance, and a magnet for millions of absorbs and performs global images, over maintenance of the canal network. The sticky question the status of ‘normal’ movement and rural migrants in search of employment. technologies and ways of life. delta soil barely supports the mix of condominiums, measured time. According to Deleuze, in modern Redundant transit systems operate separate While this consumerist frenzy may seem at office buildings, golf courses and suburban industrial cinema the sensory-motor schemata is no networks for every income and social level. A odds with the Thai ethical self-consciousness, and housing estates planted in former paddies. longer operative, perceptions and actions cease superimposed matrix of state-sponsored and a Buddhist world-view accepts contradiction All compete for water as the city sprawls over the to be linked, space is neither coordinated nor complexly financed mega-expressway projects and and misdirection, and values the immaterial kingdom’s most fertile rice fields. filled, and characters are caught in pure optical the BTS Skytrain soar above the microcosms of temple as well as the material; it does not preclude the Walking in subsiding Bangkok is a bumpy encounter and sound situations – in the sensuality of and palace enclaves. Ground dwellers slither through possibility of incorporating the paraphernalia with unevenly buckling waves of concrete and paving everydayness itself.3 traffic along the insufficient metropolitan road system of late capitalism – especially media images – blocks. Roads, walkways and slabs at ground level The accommodating Triphumikata cosmology and innumerable informal sois, or lanes, while a still- into its world-view and cosmology. buckle and sink a few centimetres a year, while mixes with an emerging Modernist vibrant canal- and river-water-based system provides columns and highways built on piles remain stable and consciousness in contemporary Bangkok at a more languid journey within a lush yet retreating Dissolving rise further from the ground. Intermediate steps are multiple scales and sites. Golf, sex, spa, eco-, matrix of canal-fed tropical fruit orchards and rice From a slow-moving long-tail boat, the watery inserted between the upright and sinking levels of the agro-, extreme, survival, shopping, health and paddies. This multimodal network converges at the tableau of the Bangkok region unfolds from city, giving a bodily measure of the slow descent of a Above Rama III Road: the new central meditation tours attract not only Westerners new social incubators and cosmological microcosms multiple arteries of the Chao Phraya River Delta. great city into the Bight of Thailand. While flooding is business district. Hong Kong- but East Asian business and pleasure travellers of Bangkok: its multilevel shopping malls. The new The lower delta is a former seabed, and the city increasingly prevalent, a recent mild earthquake style condominium Above developments as well. Confined by a Confucian work ethic at BTS Skytrain links, and within its stations flat plasma Remnants of the 1997 resembles a giant starfish, spreading vegetated generated much new fear and talk: should a strong line the Chao Phraya River home, they look for refuge and a lost sense of screens advertise, malls, stores and products, economic crash: unfinished tentacles along its old canals and streams. A quake hit, the vibrating clay soil will liquefy, turning overlooking the fruit orchards condominium development, of Ban Krachao. ‘Asia-ness’ in self-exoticising Thailand. But forming one of the largest interconnected shopping Rama III Road. vast carpet of green orchards and blue paddies Bangkok into a giant soup of flotsam.

80 81 Living in Bangkok requires not only sure- In contrast to the heavy maintenance of the of posts and beams supporting elaborate continually privatised, the private realm is open to footedness but also an obsessive maintenance of masterpieces and Thai high art, the kingdom’s simple umbrella-like roofs shading clustered pavilions the street and invitingly public. building and body surfaces. Concrete buildings rural architecture is annually rebuilt from materials surrounding raised exterior living platforms Early-modern architects in Bangkok reinvented annually mould, peel, crack and flake in harvested around the house – bamboo, giant leaves, along rivers and canals. This is an elevated the international Modernist canon with an indigenous dramatically alternating mildewy monsoons and grass, rattan and cane. Bangkok’s commercial buildings architecture of flexibility and grace, awareness of the interrelations between climate, hot dry seasons, while giant billboards beckon similarly reharvest their surface images. New marble unencumbered by heavy furniture, cooled by environment, body, heat regulation and informal Bangkokians to shed their skins, advertising and granite commercial buildings are recast in evaporating watery gardens and inducing a social behaviour. Remnants of this confidently crafted, whiteners, oils, lotions and exfoliants. millennium metallic silver panels and seasonal leisurely, almost floating life style. Interior early-modern architecture – and the social life it The old craft of mixing finely sifted white lime shopping themes are cause for frequent redecorations. and exterior blend into overlapping zones, encourages – persist in schools, universities and with sticky sugar-cane juice produces a Each holiday event creates the opportunity to remake but distinctions between shade and sunlight government offices, as well as in older hotels and hardened eggshell plaster surface, reserved for facades, interior atria, exterior plazas and road dominate social behaviour. houses. These open and accommodating buildings the Department of Fine Arts temple restorations. medians, while logos cover Bangkok’s shopping The programme of the Thai house is not just welcome casual short-cuts. Generous vestibules, Multiple coats of natural resin, black lacquer centres, office buildings, hotels, homes and factories a private retreat, but an economic space that terraces, halls, balconies and stairways are all and gold-leaf angels protect and decorate wood with branded tattoos; a seasonal secular reconstruction accommodates multiple activities and flexible, outside; only classrooms or offices are enclosed. shutters. Inlaid mother-of-pearl, glass or of the Triphumikata cosmology. extended family structures. Thai domesticity Everyday life is constantly interrupted by this porcelain meticulously decorate doorways and invades the public realm of Bangkok as straw generous exterior realm. Work is broken up by pediments with an assortment of mythical Evaporating mats are spread, jasmine garlands are woven changes in weather, vegetation, bird songs, stray beasts. The legendary naga serpent slithers Thai architecture developed a thermodynamic and or a kitchen is unpacked on the pavement. dogs and chance encounters. down temple eaves cajoling monsoon rains to social logic before the extravagance of central air- Wandering the small lanes and alleys of The more recent embrace of central air-conditioning Above flood the paddies. This overabundance of conditioning induced a climatic and cultural amnesia. Above Bangkok is like walking into a variety of has accompanied sloppy industrialised building A Chinese ancestor shrine reflective surface decoration dissolves the mass Before reinforced concrete construction and BTS Skytrain at the Siam crowded, outdoor living-rooms for a wildly production, and the mistaken belief that global business faces an unfinished office Discovery Center, development, Rama III Road. of the buildings in the blinding white sunlight. Corbusier’s five points, Thais developed a piloti system Pathumwan intersection. diverse extended family. If public space is and tourism demand cheaply finished, hermetically

82 83 Bundit Chulasai, the Bundit sealed, isolating bubbles. As a result, the city After hundreds of millions of dollars evaporated Changing States of Capitalism coexists in Thailand along with the embodied House, Bangkok, 1999 that historically developed as porous compounds overnight, post-bubble societal soul-searching has As capitalism changes states it is urgent to certainty guaranteed by the Theravada cosmology Above and opposite in a temperature-regulating watery garden has produced a desire to recover those qualities of the develop new tools to perceive the changing under the symbolic leadership of a Dhamma king Chulasai describes the house he built for himself during the become a constellation of heat-generating and city that are most valuable to both its citizens and state of capitalism. Our image of Asian and the political guidance of a telecommunications- depths of the Thai economic socially segregating islands. visitors alike. urbanism and late 20th-century globalisation billionaire prime minister. In fact, contemporary crisis in the late 1990s as a creative and pragmatic Despite the constant mobility required by A remarkable example of this yearning is the home is formed by Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, radical Buddhism reinterprets the Triphumikata’s response to the cultural a modern metropolis, Bangkok stubbornly architect Bundit Chulasai designed for himself in Notes Hong Kong and Singapore: insular, Confucian representational levels of heaven, hell, demons context of a newly industrial 1 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: society. The natural resources retains a slow pace, produces the most Bangkok: an outdoor living-room suspended on the The Movement Image, cultures that developed highly uniform, self- and gods, not as a literal description of the universe that supported the traditional aberrant of movements and induces countless seventh floor between concrete piers. The floating Minnesota University Press sacrificing, apartment-dwelling, educated, but as a metaphorical explanation for changing Thai way of life are no longer (Minneapolis), 1986, p 80. available, yet the sedentary breaks from activity. The climate living-room is framed by the building’s cores: kitchen 2 Pinraj Khanjanusthiti, middle-class, urban, industrial societies psychological states, altered states of consciousness technological, economic and and the culture dictate release from constant and library to the north, bathroom, lift and stairs to ‘Buddhist Architecture: within a generation. and keener perceptions here and now.4 human means of achieving a Meaning and Conservation ‘modern’ society remain out ‘doing’, and tempt the art of just sitting or the south, while the bedroom soars above. As recycled in the Context of Thailand’, The 1997 Asian financial crisis Cities reform our world-view and create embodied of reach. His house, therefore, reclining and doing nothing but watching and waste-water feeds a generous assortment of potted PhD thesis, University of demonstrated that this economic model could knowledge. Contemporary cinema helps us find our is an economical, practical, York, 1996. modern concrete frame and listening to the city. plants, planes land at five-minute intervals on the 3 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: not be sustained, and the young from Seoul to way in a non-narrative, fluid, decentred and atemporal block house that captures According to Deleuze, liquid perception horizon and guests can survey the more than 300 The Movement Image, Singapore seem no longer willing to make the urban world. Following Henri Lefebvre’s call for the the Thai domestic spirit within. Minnesota University Press Bundit’s colleague at evaporates into a gaseous state when unfinished skyscraper skeletons that form Bangkok’s (Minneapolis), 1988, p 37. same sacrifices as their parents. Bangkok’s regeneration of the city commencing with a restoration Chulalongkorn University, cinematic movement is no longer associated skyline. Both a meditative retreat and cinematic frame 4 Peter A Jackson, liquid, horizontal space of pure decentralised of the body, radical Buddhist Bangkok’s absorbing, Professor Piyalada Buddhadasa: Theravada Thoveeprungsriporn, calls this with action but reverses, slows down or stops for the city around, Bundit’s house is a model for Buddhism and Modernist potentiality – where extreme social dissolving and evaporating urban consciousness spirit ‘rom reun’ quality, the our view of the world. During the booming modern, high-density mid-rise housing incorporating Reform in Thailand, Silkworm possibilities emerge at any point in the city promises a keener recognition of the relations cool and refreshing sensation Books (Chiang Mai), 2003. associated with traditional economy before 1997, Bangkokians seemed to the logic of outdoor tropical life style for a society 5 The author would like to – appeals to the restless tastes of this new between the world, our desires and ourselves as Thai houses, now located six have lost sight of the benefits of this state of that privileges leisurely, playful and open social contact thank Dean Vira Sachakul and generation and represents a new wave of subjects and producers of urban capital’s complex floors above the congested the Faculty of Architecture at streets of central Bangkok. being in a mad rush towards development. over individual privacy. Chulalongkorn University. Asian urbanism. Rampant unpredictability flows of energy and matter.5 4

84 85 Like many grass-roots makeshift responses to the Recon- urban condition in Asia, the low-cost self-build housing solution that Ying Chun Hsieh struction has created for the Thao tribe in central Taiwan represents a local resistance Solidarity: or ambivalence to globalism. As Nicholas Boyarsky explains, this is a position that The has not gone unnoticed by those with a capital interest in construction in the area,

Opposite who have felt that Hsieh is The Thao tribe has the smallest population of all the aboriginal tribes in Taiwan: 281. Despite its small size it has retained cutting them out of a lucrative Thao its own unique customs, culture, language and ancestral beliefs and rituals. Most of the tribe’s market. Hsieh’s personal members live in Brawbaw on the banks of the Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. The massive earthquake that shook safety has been under Taiwan in September 1999 damaged or destroyed 80 per cent Tribe of the Thao tribe’s houses. threat on several occasions. 86 87 Ying Chun Hsieh heads a group of young and a truck hoist, a two-storey house can be put While rituals are under way the tribe places two Wages account for about half the cost of architects in the 921 Disaster Area Housing together within a day. bamboo poles to signify the scope of the ritual constructing a building. If the government hopes that Reconstruction Service Group who live and ‘The Thao tribe has the smallest population of all the area, and people and animals are forbidden from earthquake victims can construct their own houses work at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan. He is aboriginal tribes in Taiwan: 281. Despite its small size it entering. While simple in appearance, the ritual to help alleviate the unemployment problem, then currently developing modular housing has retained its own unique customs, culture, language space is very solemn and filled with taboos. simple designs and construction methods must be elements that can be used for putting up and ancestral beliefs and rituals. Most of the tribe’s This seriousness is not possible if the rituals devised to allow people not skilled in construction a house for a cost of between NT$220,000 members live in Brawbaw on the banks of the Sun Moon take place on the road where cars and people – including housewives and the elderly – to take part and NT$900,000 – about half conventional Lake in central Taiwan. The massive earthquake that are constantly passing through. in the reconstruction efforts. construction costs. shook Taiwan in September 1999 damaged or destroyed One such type of building is constructed out of a Hsieh’s concept is based on the social role 80 per cent of the Thao tribe’s houses. Community Consciousness Based on lightweight steel frame, with thin steel plates held that architecture can play. One of the most Because of the Taiwanese government’s past Collective Work together by easily installed screws thereby avoiding important aspects of his project is the mistakes in policy, the Thao’s land was not incorporated Members of the Thao tribe account for only 20 per welding. The structure is easy to construct, safe, and simplification of the construction. ‘Complex as land reserved for aborigines. As a result, most of the cent of the population in Brawbaw. Moreover, can be taken apart and put up with a power screwdriver. construction methods require the use of skilled land has been expropriated or cheated away by Han through changes to land zoning laws the Installation of windows, beds and showers is also workers imported from outside. By simplifying Chinese and the government, leaving the originals with government has broken up the holdings of the tribe simple. The roof of the structure is made of plywood, construction, the aborigines can build the no land to plant crops. The tribe is skilled at fishing, but in the community. Further encroachment of the oilcloth and bamboo, which is virtually free for the houses themselves.’ The implications of this go is unable to compete with the developed marketing of concept of private property and commercialisation picking in the mountains. Roofs and walls constructed far beyond DIY. ‘It is really about the exchange the Chinese. Most of the members of the tribe now has completely undermined the original system of from bamboo are easy to build and to replace if they of labour. By bringing in friends and family, work as menial workers, cooks and vendors in the communal ownership of the tribe and separated rot. Bamboo roofs are constructed with two layers that working weekends and so forth, the cost of tourist industry at Sun Moon Lake. the symbiotic links between its members. allow air to flow in-between, dispersing heat from the the house can be further reduced.’ The elder system is not very marked in Thao society. The earthquake led to the collective hot sun beating down on the roof. Long eaves also

Working from his camp in the Thao Public affairs of the tribe, particularly rituals, are Above unemployment of the Thao tribe. Many tribe provide shade, while screens keep out insects but still Community, Hsieh has set up a simple factory handled during tribal meetings and carried out by Working from his camp in the members were able to collect money from the provide a clear view of the sky as well as ventilation to Tehua Community, Hsieh has where the modular elements of the buildings different clans and clan elders. set up a simple factory where government by carrying out reconstruction work, the house. Steel is another reusable resource, and the Above are made. Most of the complex design work has the modular elements of the which also allowed them to rebuild a sense ease with which the buildings can be put up and taken Building the village. Further already been done, and components simply have Community Layout Based Around Ritual Space buildings are made. Most of of a shared community through shared work. down makes for straightforward reconstruction. encroachment of the concept of the complex design work has private property and to be bolted together. Provision is even made for After Brawbaw was incorporated by the state in Taiwan, already been done, and Rebuilding housing requires a great deal of Aboriginal houses do not have separate bedrooms, commercialisation has the hanging of scaffolding, to increase safety nearly all of the Thao tribe’s ritual spaces (open areas for components simply have to be coordinated labour, and links between members but bamboo strips instead. Outer walls are constructed completely undermined the bolted together. With Hsieh’s original system of communal for the workers, many of whom are drawn from drying grain) were forcibly purchased by the government modular elements, simple of the tribe were re-established through the out of bamboo strips with an inner layer of aluminium ownership of the tribe and the ranks of the unemployed in the area. With and given to public officials or Han Chinese. The tribe power tools and a truck hoist, process. This should serve as a future base insulation or cloth for heat insulation that also keeps separated the symbiotic links a two-storey house can be put between its members. Hsieh's modular elements, simple power tools was forced to hold its rituals in the middle of roads. together within a day. for even closer relations among the tribe. out water and insects. 4

88 89 to incise to coexist to protest to pause to loosely connect to graft to find to deregulate to enable to connect to self-organise to juxtapose to incorporate to choose (hidden orders) to understand to cut to activate to irritate to troubleshoot to maintain memory to adapt to find to misunderstand to fragment to collaborate to engage to include to overlap to pose questions (common ground) to negotiate Urban Diary: A Conclusion Although the work is particular (Verb) to Taipei, the process of Action observation and mapping reveals phenomena that have currency for other cities and design practice in general. These celebrations of the rituals Taipei and ordinariness of daily life, Here, Sand Helsel, ‘an Asian architect’ born in the US and teaching at RMIT in Urban Diary3 the exploration of the hidden Melbourne, and also actively involved in conferences, workshops and study tours in The garbage truck arrives at 8pm on Monday systems that shape the city, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia, provides insights into Taipei through nights playing a digitised version of Mozart’s and the particularities of extracts from her urban diary. A Little Night Music. The neighbourhood gathers with its assortment of rubbish. speed, mobility and density 1 The verb list provides a counterpoint to the Urban Diary Through critique, the observations of the and their physical implications, adjectives normally applied to the Asian city – I fell in love with Taipei after my first visit. How does existing conditions are evaluated for their words such as ‘dense’, ‘rapidly developing’, one operate when taking students to Taipei? I realised strengths and weaknesses, and the all contribute to a reading of ‘chaotic’ and ‘ad hoc’. Unlike these general that this dilemma became a paradigm for how one opportunities they offer and the threats they Taipei that also has resonance descriptions contributed by Western urbanists, might operate in the Asian city. While it is often pose. All opinions are acknowledged and the verbs are from (and about) people making, considered a problem to work outside one’s cultural respected. In some instances a phenomenon can with issues that affect other working and being in the region. This is not a milieu, for fear of a lack of understanding, of be considered both positively and negatively. urban centres, regardless language of hyperbolic qualifiers: extra-large misreading, we use this as an opportunity for discourse. I, personally, remain charmed by the garbage or mega-Dutch. It is not about the imposition of The work strives to find common pleasures within the and recycling truck that arrived in my of scale and locale. a formalist overlay from above or afar. A different city and to accommodate different readings – what neighbourhood on a Monday evening heralding Our traditional spheres of scale of operation and an intimate connection some regard as strengths, others may consider its arrival with a blasting digital version of operation as architects, at with the material at hand – the city – is implied, weaknesses. The seemingly banal is reconsidered. This Mozart’s A Little Night Music; the neighbourhood in the way that a sculptor such as Richard Serra dialogue becomes a paradigm for the city; the issue is congregates to personally load its rubbish in an 1:200 scale in plan and section, might work. ‘To master-plan’ makes a rather that of negotiation, to allow for the different voices to be event that felt like a gathering in a village square. for instance, are of little use clumsy verb in this context. heard and for multiple narratives and complexity. The The authors of an alternative proposal to The plan of Taipei produced by the architect can assist in this act of curation. One becomes rubbish collection in the Hong Kong district are to us when contending with a Department of Urban Design (see opposite) a sort of Taipei operationist providing an alternative less romantic than myself, realising that this highway or grasping with issues is an extraordinary document. Building lines model for examination, speculation and proposition Above ‘ritual’ poses a nuisance to those with large Excerpt from the plan of Taipei and city blocks are delineated; city streets and that is based on an intimate connection to the city. produced by the Department families, during a monsoon, and for the elderly such as the sustainable agenda. pavements are drawn. However, this is where of Urban Design. Only the or handicapped. Through an awareness of the hatched buildings are legal, When working at a larger 2 convention stops. Only the hatched buildings Urban Diary all cross-hatched structures range of possible interpretations they pose exist legally, with approvals from the statutory ‘The World Famous Mango Ice Store’; operative verb: are illegal. questions that avoid an oversimplification of scale we are often distanced authorities and in accordance with the master to negotiate. A 24-hour ‘stakeout’ reveals not only an Notes the problem(s), and thus a subsequent from our subject matter plan. All crosshatched structures are illegal entrepreneurial spirit in the (illegal) appropriation of 1 From notes taken by Sand expedient response. Their strategy to create Helsel during the and create the sort of in this context, and have been constructed the public space of the street, but also a social code presentations and discussions neighbourhood recycling centres maintains according to the rules of some other system. in the system of negotiation with adjacent businesses. of the conference proceedings the community spirit and ensures a continued disenfranchisement that is ‘How Small is the City’, Urban Lanes are filled in, or become internal The structure opens at 11am and begins to Flashes 2, Linz, Austria, April economic mix, the reuse of abandoned historic addressed by ‘urban agitators’ courtyards; the pavement disappears at times. gradually unfold on to the adjacent lot and footpath: 2002. Japanese houses, the continued relevance of 2 The verb list is homage New typologies are created: arcade insertions, tables and chairs, service stations, overflow from the to Richard Serra’s ‘Verb List’ urban typologies such as the shop house and like the Situationists in Paris donut buildings, wrap-around commerce. Any kitchen. The popularity of this fruit-and-ice treat in Gregoire Muller, The New the light-industrial unit in the face of impending Avant-Garde: Issues for the and the Stalker Group open bit of land appears up for grabs. The grows throughout the day; the crowds build, illegally Art of the Seventies, Praeger high-rise development, and an alternative authority that the map might have is challenged parked cars and service vehicles expand the (New York), 1972, p 94. system of navigation within the urban fabric in Italy. I concur that it is our 3 From Peter Ryan, ‘The World by the entrepreneurship of the inhabitants. This ‘building’s’ perimeter deep into the neighbourhood. Famous Mango Ice Store’, in in addition to a viable environmental proposal. responsibility to enable and is considered a viable alternative to the systems By 6pm an employee from the ice store arrives to ‘Taipei Operations’, exhibition By being able to deal with the complexity of the and forthcoming book, curated empower our constituents of legislation and planning prevalent in most establish an unobstructed frontage to the Japanese and edited by Sand Helsel and site phenomena, they create a true sustainable Western cities. A form of civitas in action. restaurant next door when the queues get long. KC Bee. project with its requisite breadth of concerns. in the curation of the city. 2 90 91 Modern Heritage: A Terrain of the Question Guyon Chung describes how a redundant railway line in Gwangiu, a core town in southwest Korea, has created a natural caesura in the continual growth and flow of the city. Popular public consensus demanded that the slither of land not be redeveloped but greened with a dense planting of trees. This has not only markedly improved the quality of life of Gwangiu’s inhabitants but has also allowed a sense of community to evolve out of an urban void. 1 Flowing and Pause The city is like a living organism, constantly moving and changing. Not that it is mobile by nature but, to sustain its urban life, it requires duration and ceaseless reproduction of numerous Opposite Aerial view of Project4 on forms of flows. Maintaining the flow of people, abandoned station site. Land materials, goods, electricity, water (both supply has its inherent meanings and attributes according to and sewage), gas, voices, signs, wastes, motor its specific location. In order vehicles and trains is essential for the city’s to induce reflections on the importance of the land, survival. At times, however, it seems that the city simple facilities or temporary exists to support such a flow – the flow itself is structures are inserted with consideration for the the city’s raison d'être – rather than the flow surrounding environment. supporting the lives of its people. Therefore, when Above the flow pauses, events occur that provide an 2. Modern Heritage: Time and Space Sealed Nam Gwangiu Market Square. occasion to look back upon the city and its flow. Once a small town with less than 10,000 citizens in the Once a small town with less than 10,000 citizens in the In fear of a blackout, computer-users tend early 20th century, Gwangiu is now a core city in the early 20th century, Gwangiu to click the save button every few minutes; southwest of the Korean peninsula with a population of is now a core city in the southwest of the Korean when the lights actually go out, candles over 1.3 million. Like other cities in Korea, it has peninsula with a population replace light bulbs. Expecting suspension of experienced a period of rapid industrialisation for the of over 1.3 million. supply, water is stored in tubs; and bicycles last 30 years – horizontal expansion necessitated Right are used when public transport goes on strike. subway networks and resulted in the large-scale Historical view of Gwangiu railway. When a train that There have always been substitutes sustaining construction of satellite towns outside of the old centre. ran through the city core the city’s flow. When a train that ran through This process of enlargement is not so special, save for for 70 years suddenly ceased operation, resulting in an the city core for 70 years suddenly ceased the closing of the Gwangryeo line – a railway built back immediate pause in the operation, resulting in an immediate pause in in 1930 that extends 10.8 kilometres across Gwangiu. In use of land that stretches 10.8 kilometres across the use of land that stretches 10.8 kilometres more recent times the railway had been accused of Gwangiu, the citizens were across Gwangiu, the citizens were forced to having a negative influence on traffic flow and forced to face an unprecedented situation. face an unprecedented situation. degrading the environment of neighbouring towns. 92 93 All of a sudden, the railway in the middle 3. Connection: Subject and Reason of the city was abandoned, and this terrain It was the citizens who achieved the first connection – as vague now awaits new connections to the urban soon as the railway ceased operation their collective wish fabric. However, the site is not just another to have an urban greenway connected with the abandoned public space in a city. When the railway was site. Until now, momentum for urban change has mostly built the site was situated at the outskirts of come from the government authorities who are notorious Gwangiu. Then the growth of the city skipped for hasty decisions and shoddy implementation of urban over the area, which has now become part of programmes, however complex the issues concerned. kilometres does not present in a uniform condition nomadic lives. As a result we now have dynamic cities the city core. Like the portion in a child’s The decisions these bodies make regarding the use of and, depending on the overall concept or and mobile homes. These may well reflect the wisdom of drawing outlined by a wax candle into which space are always a surprise to the citizens. Though there methodology, the new greenway could be either urban living, and could help to enrich the assets of the city. watercolour cannot permeate, it is where the are sometimes instances when they hold public hearings rich or monotonous in character. wave of urban sprawl overran, where the prior to decision-making, these are strictly formal. Open-Air Classroom development was reserved for another time, The city government’s initial plan for the abandoned Land Art The adjacent region of the site is for the most part and where the trace of time was carved into the railway was to use it as an electric railway, but such an Even before the abolishment of the railway, a residential area with a number of educational city itself. Its sealed time and space, along with idea was met with great resistance from the people of neighbours were using parts of the site to institutions. The site could be used as an open-air plant vegetables, and cultivated land among classroom for these schools, offering students the the rubble and rail sleepers has since become chance to observe the ecosystem of its nature. This abandoned site is not a tabula rasa but a modern heritage of a refreshing element of the urban landscape. Gwangiu, not simply a void area but a land of potentials interacting Urban Ecology with its surroundings, a plane rather than a line, a continuous scenery Open-Air Museum The traces of botanical life along the disused railway It is unfortunate that all that is left of the 70-year that runs through the city present a clear section of rather than a railway, inspiring link and connection over boundary and history of Nam-Gwangiu station is its site. By Gwangiu’s ecology, and alternative possibilities of the city discontinuity, a place of ecological expression and recovering nature connecting the railway, the people, Nam-Gwangiu can be found in its ecological characters, especially those beyond the rubble, not a road destined to perish but an open future. market and the remains of the platform, a half- of the railway which, used for 70 years under different broken bridge and other vestiges of the railway, conditions, has formed its own peculiar environment. a concrete place is constructed that enables the rails and sleepers, is now pulled out – Gwangiu, and as a result of great public effort a greenway people to encounter the history of the past. Promenade and Daily Sports Experience ironically, it looks as though the railway is just of dense trees was eventually created at the heart of Artistically rendered facilities or structures for walking or about to be built. The land from 70 years back the city instead. The major reason why this incident is Architectural Landscape sports could add diversity to the citizens’ everyday lives. is suddenly overlaid upon the present site. significant is that it paved the way for the people to Land has its inherent meanings and attributes As a result, it has lost its original purpose exercise their natural rights to build within the city what according to its specific location. In order to induce Vision – it remains a keyhole in a padlock that should they deemed necessary. Its success was the result of reflections on the importance of the land, simple What will the future be like for an ever-changing city and be approached by another time and space. unprecedented consensus among the people. facilities or temporary structures are inserted with life within it? Aren’t the abounding fluids and pollutants In other words, this abandoned site is not a This is the starting point of building a community – consideration for the surrounding environment. (such as noise) of contemporary society and urban spaces tabula rasa but a modern heritage of Gwangiu, a concept that usually seems irrelevant to the realities actual clues to imagining what is to come? Is the trip to not simply a void area but a land of potentials of contemporary cities. People have now come to think Connection the invisible city beyond our reach? As George Simmel interacting with its surroundings, a plane of land not in reductive terms of area or realty, but as a The construction of railways reduced or ruptured remarked: ‘The spiritual aspects of life in the metropolis rather than a line, a continuous scenery rather latent energy that can improve their quality of life. The the cultural, historical value of the city, but by have incited intellectual rather than emotional response than a railway, inspiring link and connection success of the greenway was also due to the fact that adding new devices to the present site alleys, to outer stimuli, which resulted in the proliferation of the over boundary and discontinuity, a place of the site was empty – it was an example of generating bridges and hills next to the railway can be abstract in men.’1 The promotion of private lives in the city ecological expression and recovering nature community through an urban void. The voluntary formation reinvigorated. No longer the city’s dividing agent, stems from the characteristic of modern civilisation that Above and opposite beyond the rubble, not a road destined to of a public value by the people is what we call the creation the rail can now promote harmony through its places objectivity over subjectivity. But with the themes Joong+Keun Lee House/ perish but an open future. It is a terrain of the of culture, and here it is manifested by replacing the connection with the previously disconnected. introduced above, citizens can learn to correspond to their Home: Strawberry & Sunflower. People have now come to think question which should be reapproached with road of steel with that of culture, and territorialising the Note daily activities and consume part of their city subjectively of land not in reductive terms a comprehensive point of view prior to any deterritorialised soil for the good of the citizens. However 1 Francoise Choay, Nomadic Shelter and emotionally, gaining balance in urban living. Spirit of area or realty, but L’Urbanisme, Utopies et form of reuse. It is not common to completely just the will and choices of the citizens may be, the road Realities: Une Autholoige, Ed du Urbanisation, accompanied by the increase of the would thus be formed within the city, and the city would as a latent energy that can improve their quality of life. shut down an urban railway. for its realisation nonetheless varies – the length of 10.8 Seuil (Paris), 1965, p 409. urban population, naturally leads to a boost in condition the spirit of the citizens. 4 94 95 The recent wake of Vietnam’s liberalising economic policies, or Doi Moi, has produced the boom of a rapidly growing sector of a society previously engaged in state- provided work that now ventures into small, privately owned businesses. This has meant a drastic increase in the use of the street for commercial use and an extended exertion of the built environment. The encroachment on to the street for personal and Hanoi commercial uses such as pavement stalls, the spilling out of wares from cramped shops and the parking An urbanist as well as of motorcycles and bicycles is now part of the Above a photographer, Justine contemporary Hanoi streetscape. Cycling feet. Graham has a special The sanitised, modern Western city it is not. Hanoi’s Opposite, top seamless chaos is noisy, full-on, exhausting, Real and fake ladies. interest in the boundaries exhilarating and inscribed with daily urban rituals. Opposite, upper middle right of public and private space. These repeated gestures involve sweeping one’s Courtyard peace. In this project undertaken entrance, exercising in public spaces at 6am, navigating Opposite, upper middle left the streets amidst hoards of street vendors and Xe dap (bicycle) repair men. in Hanoi, Vietnam, she motorbikes, sitting on street corners gossiping around Opposite, lower middle right specifically focused on a bowl of pho (traditional soup), or simply wandering Phone numbers on a wall. the way that small-scale the dark streets when the evening lights are turned off. Opposite, lower middle left Amidst the smell of incense and motorbike fumes, the Outdoor cat toc (haircut) commercial ventures sounds of squealing pigs off to the market, street space. encroach on the street, vendors announcing their goods, and the interminable Opposite, bottom left sight of plastic and crafted objects for sale, I looked for Dangling rope. competing for attention quieter signs of human presence: a dangling rope Opposite, bottom right amid the hustle of on a construction site, a peaceful courtyard, an outdoor Hanoi skyline across the Red River. everyday city life. haircut shop, phone numbers on a wall. 4 96 97 Contributor Sue Barr is a photographer and tutor at the Architectural Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix are French architects living and Association in London. She travelled to Japan to photograph working (teaching) in Hong Kong. In 1997 they founded MAP Office, a Gaikoku Mura in the summer of 2002, work that along with collaborative studio involved in cross-disciplinary projects that incorporate an accompanying essay by Japanese architect and critic architecture and the visual arts. They have participated in international Akira Suzuki was exhibited at the AA in January 2003. Current exhibitions including the 7th Architecture Venice Biennale and the 1st exhibition projects include an exploration into the demarcations International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, where they won an award of architectural ‘non-space’ (the gaps between recognised places) for the best ‘inspiration’. Current research focuses on ‘lean planning’, and ‘The Art of Parking’, a historical typology of multistorey car which explores the impact of economic production and distribution mapped parks. Her work has been featured in numerous international on to a reconvertible environment, and the specific ‘Made in China’ journals and publications. conditions of the Pearl River Delta region.

Biographies Nicholas Boyarsky is a London-based architect and educator. New York-born Sand Helsel was educated in London at the Architectural He is a director of the award-winning practice Boyarsky Murphy Association, and is Associate Professor of Architecture at RMIT in Architects, which he co-founded with Nicola Murphy in 1993. Melbourne. She has organised and participated in conferences, workshops He has taught and lectured internationally and is currently and study tours in Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia. a visiting professor at Bergen Architecture School in Norway. Her practice straddles the traditional disciplinary boundaries between He has been a core member of the Urban Flashes Group from art, architecture, landscape, urbanism and engineering. Taipei Operations its inception in 1999. is a touring exhibition. A book is also in progress.

Gary Chang graduated from the Department of Architecture, Hirohisa Hemmi is an associate architect at Kajima Design, Tokyo. University of Hong Kong, in 1987, and founded EDGE in He studied with Kazuo Shinohara at Tokyo Institute of Technology where 1994. Since 1995 he has been teaching as an associate he received his Master of Engineering degree. As a Fulbright scholar he professor at the Department of Architecture of HKU, and is received his Master of Architecture degree from Yale in 1987, and worked for a lecturer in SPACE HKU. He has also lectured at the Technische Richard Meier and Partners in Los Angeles before rejoining Kajima Design. Universiteit (Delft), Royal College of Art (London) and Milan Since 1998 he has collaborated with Shinohara on publication projects Polytechnic. His first solo exhibition was held at the Hong concerning the city and the house. The first of the series was published Kong Arts Centre in 2000. He was among the first group of as Discourse on Tokyo from Tokyo, via Kazuo Shinohara, in 2001. representatives from Hong Kong to be invited to participate in the International Biennial Exhibition of Architecture, Venice, Ying Chun Hsieh graduated in 1977 from the Architecture Department at in 2000, and again in 2002. Tamkang University, Taipei, after which he worked as a builder/constructor. In the late 1980s he designed several factories at Hsin Chu Science Park. He won Ti-Nan Chi is principal of Chi’s Workshop & Z Architects, Taipei. the competition for the Hsin Chu Cultural Center (1992) and Hakka Museum In 1999 he founded the Urban Flashes networking and Human at Kaohsiung (1994). He has been prominent in proposing many reconstruction Environment Group NGO. He studied at Yale under Frank Gehry ideas, such as ‘construction solidarity’, after the 1999 earthquake, to help and philosopher Karsten Harries. His works have been exhibited people reconstruct not only their physical but also their living space. at ‘Cities on the Move’ at Secession/PS1/Hayward Gallery (Vienna/New York/London) in 1997, ‘Ker Da Ker Xiao’ at the Karl-Heinz Klopf was born in Linz, Austria, where he studied at the Architectural Association, London, in 1998, ‘East Wind’ at University for Artistic and Industrial Design. Based in Vienna, the main Park Tower, Tokyo, 2000, and the Venice Biennale at Arsenale, concern of his artistic practice is constructed environments and the Venice, 2000. Publications include the design document changes of everyday life in relation to today’s technological developments. Tangibleintangible (1998), Thinking Architecture (1992) and He works in different media such as video, photography, installations Trans-Prophecy (1999). and projects in the context of architecture and urbanism.

Architect Guyon Chung attented the Ecole Nationale Superieure Peter Lang received his Bachelors in Architecture from Syracuse University, des Arts Decoratifs (1972–5), Unite Pedagogique d’Architecture and completed his PhD in Italian history and urbanism at New York University. No 6 (1975–9) and Universite Paris VIII, Institut d’Urbanisme He is a Fulbright Fellow and registered architect in the US. He has edited two (1979–82). He founded Guyon Architects Associates in 1986. anthologies, Mortal City (1995) and Suburban Discipline (1997), and recently He has been the directive member of Seoul School of co-curated and co-edited with William Menking ‘Superstudio: Life Without Architecture since 1995 and is a professor at the Korean Objects’ for the Design Museum in London. He is assistant professor at Texas National University of Arts. He has received several honours A&M University’s Santa Chiara Program in Italy, where he teaches theory and such as the Architectural & Cultural Contribution Prize from design studio. He has previously taught at the School of Architecture at NJIT Jinju City (1997) and the Kyobo Environmental and Cultural and the Cooper Union. He is a member of the international group Stalker/ON. Award (Architecture, 2000). Brian McGrath is an architect and co-founder of urban-interface.com, a Tokyo-born Nobuaki Furuya received his Masters in Architecture collaborative group exploring the relationship between multimedia and from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1980. From 1986 to 1987 he urban design. His project Manhattan Timeformations (2000) has received worked in the studio of Mario Botta, and from 1989 to 1994 many awards from international arts, architecture and science was assistant professor at Kinki University. In 1994 he established organisations. He teaches at Columbia and New School Universities, NASCA in Tokyo, and in 1999 was made professor at Waseda New York, and Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. He was a senior University. Awards include the Japan Institute of Architecture Fulbright scholar in Thailand in 1998/99 and is currently working with (JIA) Award 2000, 2002 and 2003, and the JIA Annual Award 2003. an interdisciplinary team of ecologists and sociologists on the Baltimore He is also vice-president of the JIA. Ecosytem Study, and co-authoring a book, Urban Patch Dynamics.

Justine Graham is an urbanist and photographer working in Yoshiharu Tsukamoto graduated from the Department of Architecture, London. She has worked for the Architecture Foundation and Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology, of which he has been General Public Agency as a project coordinator, and is now associate professor since 1999. In 1992 he established Atelier Bow-wow with freelancing for various cultural projects relating to the public Momoyo Kaijima. The office has received the Tokyo Housing Award (2000) and realm and urban regeneration. Her photographic work revolves the Yoshioka Prize for Mini-House, and has recently begun exhibiting art around urban space and the boundaries between public and works at international art exhibitions in Fukuoka (Japan), Gwangiu (Korea), private spaces, with a strong interest in non-Western cities. Shanghai (China) and Venice( Italy), and at the Walker Art Center, US.

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